Next week sees the return of the date marked in extra thick outline in many yearly calendars of the international health and medical technology industry: From Monday to Thursday (14 to 17 November 2022), the international leading medical trade fair MEDICA and COMPAMED, the leading international trade fair for suppliers from the medical technology industry, will be held in Düsseldorf. Compared to last year, when the first in-person event relaunched after the wholly digital meeting in 2020, both events have seen a notable increase in participation and booked presentation areas. Almost the entire trade fair area is taken.
“At MEDICA 2022, we will be welcoming more than 4,400 presenting companies. At COMPAMED 2022, there will be around 700. We consider this increase of 40 percent for booked areas and many different participants from 70 nations as a huge sign of the trust across borders that is being placed in both events. What the medical technology industry needs in turbulent times such as these are just these strong platforms for international exchange, joint ventures and business. Companies are seeing an increasing necessity to work jointly with their partners in supply and manufacturing to ensure delivery capacity in times when prices increase dramatically and construction parts are becoming sparse”, says Christian Grosser, Director Health & Medical Technologies at Messe Düsseldorf, underscoring the importance of MEDICA and COMPAMED.
Both events combined will again offer a professional audience a comprehensive overview of the newest medical products and services for modern treatment in doctors’ offices and clinics, including all relevant process steps in product development and product manufacturing.
The scope of novelties presented at MEDICA ranges from laboratory technology and equipment to physiotherapy and orthopaedic technology, convenience goods and consumables, up to high-tech medical solutions (i.e. diagnostic imaging, robotics) and health IT applications.
Microengineering, innovative coatings and materials, sensors, packaging technology or complete processing of individual orders, too, are part of the main focus of COMPAMED in Halls 8a and 8b. "The disturbance of our economic relations caused by COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine has shown how fragile our supply chains are. Many of our high-tech companies are looking for closer cooperation with countries with which we share common ethical values, e.g. the USA", says Dr Thomas R. Dietrich, Managing Director of the International Microtechnology Business Network IVAM. IVAM is also organising the COMPAMED HIGH-TECH FORUM as well as a product market geared towards microtechnology as part of COMPAMED. The goal of the session for internationalisation “Europe meets USA – High-Tech for Medical Devices” is to strengthen the cooperation between players from component manufacture, device manufacture and users from Europe and the USA. An evolving trend among suppliers which has been favoured by the COVID-19 pandemic is microfluidics as a key technology for patient centred applications of laboratory diagnostics.
Much news from creative start-ups
Apart from this product area involving so-called “point-of-care” diagnostics, the pandemic has also given a certain “booster” to the digitalisation of the health care system in many countries. This is where the digitally driven start-up scene profits, which will have many options next week to present themselves to investors and a professional medical audience.
Of special note is the MEDICA START-UP PARK (in Hall 12), for example. The shared booth has established itself over the years as a central meeting point for business and networking, and this year, it again counts around 40 participants. One of them is the German start-up Thericon. They see themselves as the first company to give operating theatres a type of imaging that has been compiled and visually assembled from several different sources. Visual representations of hitherto invisible tissue properties are presented together with standard coloured images on a single monitor. This diagnostic information and its intuitive display aims to make faster and more precise surgical results possible. The company’s MEDICA START-UP PARK presentation explains how it works in detail. The scope of further news from start-ups stretches from a compact system for wireless monitoring of a foetus, new ophthalmoscopes as diagnostic aids for cancer or stroke, to a variety of solutions involving Artificial Intelligence (AI), for example for medical management of nutrition, creating electronic patient files, or even for pre-operative tests concerning the evaluation of cognitive disturbances.
Olympic athletes are part of the programme – top speakers in forums and conferences
Another special stage for start-ups is the MEDICA CONNECTED HEALTHCARE FORUM (also in Hall 12). The topics for the four-day forum programme focus on applications for medical networks, on the health metaverse (VR/AR technologies), on AI and Big Data and also on robotics. Around a hundred chosen young companies present their businesses on the forum stage, where the finals of the 11th MEDICA Start-up COMPETITION (14 Nov.) and the 14th Healthcare Innovation World Cup (13 Nov) are among the highlights.
A new addition to the MEDICA programme in the midst of the physiotherapy themed segment is the MEDICA SPORTS HUB (in trade fair Hall 4). Throughout the duration of the trade fair, the professional audience is invited to train and engage in a dialogue with some of the most successful Olympic athletes in German history: Heike Henkel (Olympic champion, world champion and world record holder in the high jump) and Lars Riedel (Olympic champion and multiple world champion in the discus). Short lectures by the Olympic athletes, talk sessions and also audience-participation sporting exercises are planned to alternate every half hour on each day of the fair. The topics range from mental health, nutrition, team success to professional endurance training or even aspects of workplace health promotion.
Federal Minister of Health Lauterbach will open the Hospital Day
Not only sports celebrities have announced their attendance at MEDICA 2022, the programme of the forums and the parallel conferences also feature top-class speakers. For example, Federal Minister of Health Prof. Dr Karl Lauterbach will take part in the kick-off event of the 45th German Hospital Day (DKT), the annual leading event for the top management of German hospitals (14 Nov./CCD Ost).
Stabilising the financial situation of the public health insurers is one of the issues addressed at the MEDICA ECON FORUM (in Hall 12), where Dr Andreas Gassen, Chairman of the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (KBV) will also participate. The starting day (14 Nov.) will also offer exciting sessions, such as the one with Dr Gottfried Ludewig, Senior Vice President T-Systems Health Industry, on the so-called "amazonisation" of the healthcare market by tech giants, including the question of the extent to which this development will also affect Germany. On the third day of the forum organised by Techniker Krankenkasse (16 Nov.), the North Rhine-Westphalian Minister for Labour, Health and Social Affairs, Karl-Josef Laumann, is expected to attend. He will then address questions of future health policy in the Forum Dialogue.
Also part of the MEDICA programme are the Conference on Disaster and Military Medicine DiMiMED and the MEDICA MEDICINE + SPORTS CONFERENCE for the international professional sports medicine and sports science scene.
The halls of MEDICA 2022 and COMPAMED 2022 are open every day from Monday to Thursday, from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. The trade fairs can be visited with a ticket valid for both events and are exclusively geared towards a professional audience.
Further information (e.g. on the programmes for all of the forums and conferences and on the exhibitors taking part) is available online at: https://www.medica-tradefair.com / https://www.compamed-tradefair.com.
