MEDICA and COMPAMED driving jobs in the med tech sector23 November 2011 The organisers' report on this year's event: At MEDICA and the concurrently held COMPAMED 2011, 4,571 exhibitors presented the entire cross-section of new products, services and processes for increasing efficiency and quality for in and out-patient care to 134,500 visitors (2010: 137,087) in halls well attended across the board.
An important aspect for all export-oriented suppliers regardless of their country of origin was the number of visitors from abroad: visitors came from over 100 nations and one in two came from abroad. Included in these were prominent guests, EU Health Commissioner John Dalli (Malta), the British State Minister for Trade and Investment Lord Green and US Assistant Secretary of Commerce Suresh Kumar. On
his tour of the trade fair Dalli was impressed by the plethora of
innovations and the pivotal role that MEDICA plays as a central hub
for an innovation-driven growth industry. Suresh Kumar declared
MEDICA a “generator of jobs” stressing the difference between this
and trade fairs in other sectors of industry: “In the aviation or
automotive field the leading trade shows are dominated by major
corporations alone. By contrast MEDICA is a business platform for
thousands of small and medium-sized companies. The deals concluded
here create new jobs immediately.” As an example of the ranges presented by the totality of MEDICA exhibitors the nominees and winners of the MEDICA Excellence Awards demonstrated how innovative processes are already practically applied in clinics and medical care centres. This year the Award in four categories was presented for the first time under the auspices of Federal Health Minister Daniel Bahr at an evening gala and it honours outstanding projects in which suppliers and medical users successfully cooperate with a view to optimising patient benefits. For instance, Philips Healthcare and the Düsseldorf University Clinic work in close cooperation. They received the MEDICA Excellence Awards in the “Successful Cooperation” category for their hybrid imaging concept for complex heart valve surgery. The other winners were: Siemens/UKE Hamburg (category: Visionary Hospital / a “paperless” hospital project), Raumedic/Uniklinimum Saarland (category: Excellence in Daily Routine/development of a telemetric system for measuring intercranial pressure) as well as the start-up OD-OS (category: Newcomer/navigated laser therapy against macula oedema in the eye). “Rigidified thinking patterns must be broken down and medical
device technology must look beyond the investment cost for its
implementation,” says Horst Giesen, Director of MEDICA who believes
with the MEDICA Excellence Award the foundation stone has been laid
for establishing a quality symbol for healthcare and the MedTech
industry. A tour of the exhibition halls of MEDICA 2011 has revealed that not only manufacturers and users are co-operating ever more intensely in product development. With a view to optimising processes in both in and out-patient care the networking of equipment is also increasingly being pushed — at times achieved through cross-device, single-source solutions and at others by means of a cooperation between different device manufacturers. This particularly applies to the many different technical systems used in operating theatres. Be it medical devices for endoscopy, imaging and computer-aided scheduling or the OR table. Lighting, audio controls as well as image and video archiving –
suppliers now offer initial solutions for the easy central control
of all of these devices via one single touch screen. Likewise, for
various types of interventions specific device configurations can be
pre-programmed in such a way that they can be activated at a touch
of a button. As if by magic the devices then all adjust to the
defined pre-settings, thereby shortening resetting and change-over
times. This means doctors can now call up all relevant data from the
electronic patient records rather than carrying paper records to the
patients’ beds. This development has not been pushed by the industry
so much. Leading suppliers such as Tieto and Deutsche Telekomm
reported quite a high level of demand from clients, ie physicians
who wished medical content and information to also be available and
accessible on mobile devices that physicians are familiar with from
their own personal use. The Theme Parks and Forums forming part of MEDICA such as the
MEDICA MEDIA FORUM (telemedicine/medical IT), the MEDICA PHYSIO
FORUM (physiotherapy), the MEDICA TECH FORUM (medical device
technology innovations) or the newly launched MEDICA WOUND CARE
FORUM (wound care) enjoyed very good visitor attendance on all four
days of the event and covered a wide variety of subjects, some also
in English. Summarising events Dr Julia Rautenstrauch, Secretary General of MEDICA Deutsche Gesellschaft für Interdisziplinäre Medizin, said: “Highlights of the MEDICA TECH FORUM were the international seminars on robot and computer-aided surgery, on special concepts for military and disaster medicine as well as on current ICU trends. In the German part of the Congress the cross-disciplinary seminars on common diseases like hypertension, diabetes, aidpositas and dementia were well attended, to name but a few.” The complimentary “PatientenForen” also went down very well; the
clear highlight here was the event focusing on the key question “How
to turn 100” that explored the right lifestyle needed to reach a
‘grand old age’. The 34th German Hospital Day as the leading
communication platform for all hospital professionals addressed
health policy issues under the general heading “Improving Care –
Removing Barriers!“ The 2,250 delegates were also offered a
multi-faceted information programme such as the nursing care forum
or specialist events on the topics IT, Hygiene and Controlling.
Always held in parallel with MEDICA, COMPAMED once again underpinned its position as the leading international event showcasing supplies for medical manufacturing. 627 exhibitors from 40 nations, as many exhibitors as ever since its inception, were presented in Halls 8a and 8b showcasing their high-tech solutions to the around 16,000 visitors as competent partners for development and manufacturing in the medical device industry. In addition to the participating enterprises the exhibits on show such as new materials, mechanical and electronic components, packaging, quality testing and complete contract manufacturing also honed in the two specialised forums integrated into COMPAMED. The forum by IVAM – the Association for Microtechnology, Nano-technology and New Materials – focused on the application spectrum of micro-system technology and nano-technologies while the new COMPAMED Suppliers Forum organised by the trade magazine DeviceMed in English presented trends along the entire process chain for the development of medical products. Dates of next MEDICA in Düsseldorf: 14 – 17 November 2012
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