How biomaterials will support China’s ageing population
Chunying Chen remembers the first nanomedicine conference held in China, which took place in 2015. “It was small. Just 500 people,” she says. “Three years later, it had almost tripled in size.”
In the past decade, the chemist has also seen her budget for research into how to use nanomaterials to diagnose and treat malignant tumours triple. Her country is investing increasing amounts of money into materials research that relates to health care. Areas such as drug delivery, bone regeneration and tissue repair all rely on advanced biomaterials research, for example.
China is playing catch-up when it comes to improving the quality of its national health-care system, from funding bench research to improving patient services (see ‘Health-care research on the rise’). Although the government has increased its expenditure over the past decade, it still spends only 6% of its gross domestic product (GDP) on health care, up from 4% in 2007, compared with the average 9.6% spent by the United Kingdom, or the 17% spent by the United States.
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