Compamed, Medica Trade Fairs Offer Variety of Programming

Attendees of the world’s largest medical trade fair certainly won’t be lacking in choices this year. Medica 2013 organizers have revamped the event’s conference platform, adding three new specialized programs designed to expand the convention’s international reach.
 
Along with a new name—Medica Conferences & Forums—the four-day event in Düsseldorf, Germany (Nov. 20-23), will feature inaugural English-language conferences in education, disaster and military medicine and sports medicine. “The Medica conference, which regularly attracts several thousand participants until now has only been well-known inside Germany,” said Joachim Schäfer, Messe Düsseldorf managing director. “But now over half of the visitors to Medica come from abroad. This continuous increase in international interest does justice to the program, which has been professionally reviewed and fine-tuned with the help of famous experts.”
 
The focus of the Medical Education Conference is personalized medicine and ways the field can help clinicians achieve earlier detection, diagnosis and treatment of certain cancers. One major point of focus will be molecular markers for tumors.
 
“It’s about solid findings that might and should lead to improved and personalized patient medical care but have not yet been implemented in such a way for one reason or another,” explained professor Gabriela Möslein, M.D., spokesperson for the Hereditary Gastrointestinal Tumors group of the German Society for General and Visceral Surgery.
 
This year’s Medica fair also will feature the very first International Conference on Disaster and Military Medicine. Military doctors from all corners of the globe will convene Nov. 21-22 to discuss their respective organizational structures, forms of international cooperation and duties as well as working conditions and the requirements for medical technology.
 
Also new to Medica this year is the Sports Medicine conference, which will be held Nov. 21. This forum will focus on prevention, therapy (excluding surgery) and recovery. “For all those who are health conscious, sports plays a crucial role in staying fit into a ripe old age. However, whether caused by accidents or strain, the treatment of sports injuries requires an individual approach as well as expert knowledge,” Schäfer noted.
 
In addition to the new conferences, visitors can sit in on other specialty forums covering health IT, high-tech medicine, physiotherapy procedures, and innovation funding, or catch old favorites like German Hospital Day (a platform for all hospital decision-makers in Deutschland) or the European Hospital Conference, which will focus on the European Patient Director and liability issues related to medical malpractice.
 
Spread throughout the 17-building campus of Düsseldorf Fairgrounds, Medica is expected to attract 4,500 exhibitors from more than 60 countries this year. Roughly 15 percent of the exhibitors will showcase their products at Compamed, a smaller conference for medtech manufacturing service providers that runs concurrently with Medica (Nov. 20-22). Debuting in 1992 with 52 exhibitors, Compamed most likely will balloon this year to encompass a record 700 exhibitors from 40 nations worldwide and 12,000 square meters of demonstration space (based on early feedback and registrations). The show—in halls 8a and 8b—will cover all aspects of the medtech supply chain, from component manufacturing (electronics, parts, pipes and hoses, filters, pumps and valves) and materials to micro- and nanotechnology, inspection/testing systems and production (assembly, automation, production technology, process technology and packaging).
 
Two forums taking place at Compamed will spotlight supplier trends in the medical technology sector. The High-Tech Forum (in Hall 8a) of the IVAM German Industry Association for Microtechnology will focus on microsystems engineering, nanotechnologies, production engineering and process control, while a Suppliers Forum (in Hall 8b) sponsored by the German trade journal DeviceMed will feature speakers from companies throughout the entire product development process chain. Discussion subjects at the Suppliers Forum include: medical device biocompatibility testing; disposable motors; thin film-flexible circuits; medical apps; contract manufacturing; production and logistics; and outsourcing trends. Speakers at the High-Tech Forum, conversely, will examine diagnostics opportunities; packaging/tubing quality measurements; micro-electromechanical systems integration; printed smart sensor systems; and patient monitoring and diagnosis. Both forums will have respective German and English portions.
 
Attending the Shows

An app for iPhones, Androids and Blackberries is available providing an interactive map of the trade fair center, allowing users to jump from one hall to another and zoom into exhibitors’ booths or search the exhibitor and product databases.
 
This year, visitors again will be able to visit both Compamed and Medica with one entrance pass. E-tickets bought online can be printed out immediately after purchase and are less expensive than tickets purchased onsite, organizers note.
 
Detailed information about pricing, attendance, travel and more is available at www.compamed-tradefair.com and www.medica-tradefair.com.