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President Vladimir Putin: Good day, dear colleagues!

Today in Penza we inspected the new federal centre for cardiovascular surgery, built as part of the national health project. I must say that, based on what I have seen, we were right to go ahead with the construction of these centres, although the decision was far from unanimous. Many of our colleagues, the leaders of the regions, believed that where such centres already exist or there are similar national centres, nothing else needs to be done. We can just build on the existing base. But taking these new technologies and the opportunities they present into the regions will give citizens the opportunity – or rather, in the very near future they will have the opportunity – to take advantage of high-tech medical care, without having to go to Moscow or St Petersburg. This care is obviously becoming more available now. And, secondly, this increases the overall quality of health care in the regions, which is the most important thing.

The centre is designed to perform six thousand operations a year. The head doctor has reported that they will be performing more than three thousand this year, but at full capacity it will be six thousand.

As I have already said, I would like to point out immediately the significance of opening such centres. In fact, here we are working out the requirements for setting up domestic medicine in the future and for establishing new quality standards.

As you know, the state has allocated significant additional funds in the budget for high-tech medicine. As a result, the construction of 15 new national high-technology medical centres has begun. I happen to have a list of them. Let me remind you that we are talking about the construction of such centres in Krasnodar, Novosibirsk, Vladivostok, Smolensk, Krasnoyarsk, Khabarovsk, Kaliningrad, Perm, Chelyabinsk, Tyumen, Novosibirsk, Cheboksari, Astrakhan, Penza, and a children's onco-hematology centre in Moscow. The centre we visited should be up and running in a few months; and Astrakhan and Cheboksary are in the pipeline. I hope that all this will be done according to the schedule we agreed on.

I must say that we have already increased by a factor of three the number of citizens with access to high-tech treatment, and this is linked to the increase in federal funding for this purpose. But as I said today at the medical centre, and we have briefly discussed this with the Minister [of Health and Social Development]: obviously we have to perform medical checkups of people in the regions, we have to know how much of this high-tech care we need. At this point we do not even have approximate figures on the demand for these high-tech operations.

I want to point out that the broader challenge we face is the formation of high-tech services sector in the social realm more generally. This sector already comprises not just centres of high-tech medicine, but also innovative universities, business schools, new sports facilities and libraries. And in this regard, the work of the new medical centres from the outset should be based on the most advanced principles of medical care, including new models of financing institutions and pay, models based on results.

In the future, we need to create a unified national system of high-tech medical care. And it’s worth thinking about integrating into this single system, in addition to the federal centres, hospitals funded by the Defense Ministry and the Russian Railway, and municipal and private clinics that already have the relevant experience. The basic idea is the same: effective and high quality health care.

People should also be able to choose where they have an operation and where they are treated. For this they need all the information available on the effectiveness of treatment. In this regard, we must make information about the activities of the high-tech medical centres available to the public.

We must also clearly define the priorities for the development of high-tech medical care in general. First of all, children require special attention. We must make available the whole spectrum of modern medicine for children in neonatal period and of reproductive technologies.

Secondly, along with high-tech medical care we need to develop the domestic production of medical equipment and medicines. We talked about this today as well: of course at the moment some of our equipment does not measure up to the highest standards, or does not exceed international standards, even though we already have companies that are working in this area, companies capable of producing such equipment. As far as some types of equipment are concerned, of course, we can now confidently compete with the best in the world. I think that we need to pay particular attention to this. I would ask the Minister and maybe you, Dmitrii Anatolevich, to get actively involved and raise this topic with your colleagues as soon as you can.

Finally, the use of nanotechnology in medicine should be made a priority. The range of its applications is extremely wide, from diagnosis and treatment to the global control of infections, and we need to ensure its practical application.

In conclusion, I want to point out that all of the state’s obligations must be carried out in full and on schedule. We are talking about the health of our citizens, the lives of our citizens, and – I say this without any exaggeration – the preservation and the development of the Russian nation.

Thank you for your attention.