Thalys Medical Technology Group Corporation
The Trusted Partner to Support China’s Hospital IVD Labs Excellence

Established as the Integrated Solution Provider for Healthcare and Hospitals with greater focus on In-Vitro Diagnostics (IVD) laboratory services, Thalys Medical Technology Group Corporation (Hereinafter referred to as Thalys MedTech or Thalys Group or Thalys)is driven by a “Technology + Services + Channel” business model. The company is not a traditional IVD manufacturer or distributor in the market, and its business focus is not about how many products they can sell to the customer or how much margin it can earn from a tender or a contract. Thalys MedTech’s focus is on how much values it brings to the hospitals or the IVD Labs based on the needs or pain points that the company identifies.

Thalys MedTech actually uses its experience, expertise, technology, and products to help customers achieve growth, excellence, and success.

Following is the conversation that MedTech Outlook APAC had with Mr. Wang Zheng (James), Group President of Thalys Medical Technology Group Corporation.



Q. Thalys positions itself as a leader in offering medical supply chain management services. How is it driving its uniqueness in the In-Vitro Diagnostics (IVD) space?

A. I would precisely define Thalys Group as a leader of Integrated Solution providers for medical supply chain management with greater focus on In Vitro Diagnostics (IVD) technology, solutions, and products.



China’s rapid adoption of In-Vitro Diagnostics (IVD) technology has enabled hospitals to become more efficient. Labs, however, are still struggling due to their lack of access to management analytics and insights into daily operational data. They struggle to improve workflow, increase lab technicians’ efficiency, and reduce unnecessary consumption or waste. In addition, the Chinese Govt. ’s Tiered Diagnosis & Treatment policy has decentralized healthcare resources to the sub-tier cities and hospitals. Hospital IVD labs in these regions are relatively smaller, isolated, and lack sound IT infrastructure. Providing integrated solutions for each individual hospital IVD lab is a task easier said than done.

This is where Thalys Group steps in.

Thalys Group is a leading integrated solution provider for medical supply chain management with a greater focus on IVD technology, solution, and products. The company has invested in and innovated the regionalized integrated solutions for sub-tier hospital IVD labs based on its expertise and cloud-based SaaS platform, which facilitates testing and inspection, results sharing, and mutual recognition among hospitals of the region. As a result, the number of unnecessary duplicate checks and testing is reduced—a great leap toward improving patient and physician experience.

Thalys aspires to be the most innovative and trusted partner in China’s healthcare system with greater focus on hospital IVD labs. Our IoT hardware solutions in the lab greatly reduce the non-medical workload of laboratory staff.

Q. In extension to the previous question, could you also describe all the core IVD services and reagents you offer and their core competencies?

A. Over 1000 hospitals currently leverage Thalys’ IVD integrated solutions and services, which include a slew of lab equipment, reagents, consumables, and software that hospitals require to carry out their responsibilities successfully. Most of these offerings cover the diagnostic areas of immunology, clinical chemistry, hematology, microbiology, and point of care testing. Thalys proudly positions itself as a one-stop solution provider for hospital labs, dealing with roughly 4,000 well-known suppliers and manufacturers in China and abroad. It effortlessly supplies over 51,000 kinds of IVD reagents and consumables to its clients, all while offering a 24/7 onsite technical and logistics support team consisting of highly trained and experienced professionals.

Thalys Biotech also manufactures and supplies a comprehensive testing menu for chemiluminescence immunoassays and Point-of-Care Testing on automatic analysers and POC devices that are fully made by Thalys at its 8,0000 sqm Innovation & Manufacturing Facility in Hunan Province.

What differentiates Thalys is its partnerships and the ability to provide world-class solutions at an affordable price. For example, Thalys has been working with Siemens Diagnostics as their strategic commercial partner in China for more than 15 years. It also works with other international and domestic IVD brands, such as Abbott Dx, Beckman Coulter of Danaher and Mindray of China.

An important subsidiary of the Thalys group is Thalys Biotech—one of the leading manufacturers of blood coagulation testing—a long-standing distribution partner of BehnkElektronik of Germany and Technoclone Herstellung von Diagnostika und Arzneimitteln GmbH in Austria for their top-quality automatic coagulation analyzers and global testing reagents and kits. More importantly, the company also has its own coagulation Dx reagents and kits that are approved by the European Union. During the COVID-19 epidemic in 2021 and early 2022, Thalys antigen detection kits were exported to countries in the Eurasian region, including Turkey.

We enable automation, digitization, and innovation at each level of hospital labs based on our deep insights of the IVD market and healthcare dynamics and the ability to implement new technology, lean process, and data smart management. Our business focus is not about how many products we can sell to the customer or how much margin we can earn from a tender or a contract, our focus is on how much value we can bring to the hospitals or the IVD Labs based on the needs or pain points that we can identify and pinpoint.

Thalys is one of the few companies in the SPD Integrated Solution market that hold independent intellectual property rights on software and IoT hardware products. Its software solutions are fully developed based on open-source codes, and the IoT products are CE and CMA certified. More importantly, the software and hardware systems have received ISO20000, ISO27001, ISO9000, ISO14000, and ISO45001 certifications. This ensures the highest protection of patient privacy and guarantees the security of hospital information and data. In addition, Thalys can provide data-driven solutions (SPD+DRG+CDSS) to help hospitals and labs if they would like to grow further through digital transformation.

Q. With clinical diagnostic information increasingly becoming vital for human disease diagnosis and treatment, could you cite how your services are attending to some of the recent trends and pain points in the IVD space?

A. Thalys realizes that the global and Chinese healthcare and IVD markets have been almost dominated by COVID-19 diagnosis and treatment for the past two years. That’s why, last November, the company signed a strategic partnership with global sequencer leader Illumina China to introduce its high throughput sequencing platforms into a big teaching hospital in Western China and set up the NGS lab for metagenomic NGS analysis. This allowed clinicians to receive the pathogen identification and analysis results at a faster turnaround time of 12 to 18 hours. Thalys not only invested in the NGS systems but also optimized and integrated the unique NGS workflow into their busy and complicated routine workflows.

Not stopping there, to support the broad sub-tier market under the China Healthcare System Reform, Thalys is working with the top hospital and local govt. of the region to set up Regional Medical Laboratory Center by introducing proper technologies and products, upgrading its laboratory hardware, information system, and workflows. Consequently, smaller hospitals can send patient samples to the top hospitals and get them processed centrally. The testing and Dx results will be transferred to those hospitals and patients timely via the cloud-based SasS platform.

Thalys has also developed an Independent Clinical Lab (ICL) called Thalys MedLab in Shanghai to focus on the LDT assay development as a medical translation platform by working with top-tier hospitals and research institutions in China and a few oversee innovators from Europe and U.S. Right now, the company’s main business areas are in tumor diagnosis using liquid biopsy technology based on NGS, genetic mapping technology on human microbiota to diagnose IBS and IBD, and early diagnosis of acute infection and sepsis by transcriptome biomarkers panel.

Q. What are the one-stop medical product intensive services that Thalys offers, and how are they aiding clients to stay at the leading edge of the industry?

A. The integrated solution SPD service provided by Thalys is mainly around 3 areas:

1. In-hospital Smart Supply Chain management and operations based on the self-developed and powerful SPD software and IoT hardware (smart cabinet for high value medical disposable devices, smart refrigerators, smart shelfs in warehouse, logistic robots).

2. At the full implementation of Thalys SPD solutions at hospitals, we can continue to work with our customers to identify the areas where Thalys can add more values. For example, Thalys will introduce proper data driven platform, such as DRG solution, CDSS solutions that are well connected to SPD solutions to enable the hospital to accelerate their digitalization process.

3. As I mentioned earlier, Thalys will enable our customers by introducing proper and innovative technology based on our deep understanding of our customers daily operations in addition to the integrated SPD solution we provided. Needless to say, that our greater focus is in hospital labs, SPD business gives us the advantages in terms of customer relationship and market intelligence to pin point their challenges and to provide better solutions.

I think these are all good examples of how we help our customer to stay at leading position in the China healthcare reform and the evolving market dynamics.

Thalys aspires to be the most innovative and trusted partner in China’s healthcare system with greater focus on hospital IVD labs

Q. To bring out the story, share one or two case studies with us wherein your offerings have helped clients in overcoming their challenges in the IVD arena and attain desired outcomes?

A.• Integrated IVD Lab Solution & Services for a Class III Hospital at sub tier region.

In 2011, Yichang Central Hospital signed an 8-year collaboration agreement with Thalys for the Integrated IVD Lab Solution & Service for its central lab. During the operations period, Thalys has helped the hospital to save 30 million RMB (roughly $4.6mn) in product procurement. The daily processing capacity of clinical chemistry specimen increased by 200%, the capacity of routine blood testing increased by 100%. In addition, the hospital saved 1.5 million RMB per year for the repair and maintenance costs. The overall productivity increased with a 20% reduction in staff headcount cost. Thalys service team also assisted the hospital to complete about 150 new testing evaluation projects which greatly improve the lab proficiency and diagnostic quality. During this collaboration, Thalys contributed to the accreditation of the lab to be recognized as the Provincial Level Key Clinical Specialty by Health Commission of Hubei Province.

Q. What are some of the leading factors about your company that would motivate your potential clients to partner with you?

A.• We have accumulated extensive experiences of IVD market, working with multiple oversea and domestic suppliers, manufacturers, and different tiers of hospitals and IVD Labs in the past 20 years.

• We are one of the few companies in the SPD Integrated Solution market that hold independent intellectual property rights on software and IoT hardware products, and our software are fully developed based on open-source codes, and our IoT products are also CE and CMA certified.

• Thalys has established a market intelligence in the format of a proprietary database that contains rich data and analytics on various IVD product and medical devices information, pricing schedule at manufacturers, distributors, hospitals and patient’s level.

•We have a dedicated and well-trained team with professional background with hands on experiences and service spirits to support the lab operation and to connect with lab technicians and clinicians at the hospitals.