11.20.13
It may be a world-renowned fashion and cultural mecca, but Düsseldorf, Germany, possesses a prodigious transformational prowess as well.
Each year, Deutschland’s seventh-largest city undergoes dozens of transfigurations as it hosts a near incessant flow of trade shows for various industries. In January, for example, Düsseldorf became a nautical paradise for Europe’s maritime executives; it gave itself an early spring makeover in March for cosmetics experts and put its best foot forward for shoe designers in September.
This week, the city has turned itself into a medtech wonderland for the more than 100,000 anticipated visitors to the world’s largest medical trade fair. For the next few days, Düsseldorf’s population of 593,682 will mushroom by at least 100,000, as clinicians, medical device manufacturers, suppliers and design engineers flock to the city’s sprawling 17-building fairgrounds to form valuable industry partnerships and showcase their products. More than 4,600 exhibitors from 67 countries congregated within the fairground’s cavernous halls on the event’s first day, with Italy, China, the United States, United Kingdom and France comprising the bulk of display space. The homeland country, not surprisingly, booked the most exhibit space (42,721 square meters), according to data from Medica organizers. Colombia and Liechtenstein, on the other hand, rented no exhibit space, but still provided representation at the event.
Throngs of attendees funneled into the warehouse-sized buildings on Nov. 20 as exhibitors eager to premiere their new technology mingled with potential collaborators attempting to gain market share. Commuter trains from nearby Cologne were so packed full of visitors during the morning and evening rush hours that non-Medica travellers barely could fit into the rail cars.
Survivors of the first morning’s standing-room only train ride in were greeted with a cornucopia of options that included 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 is 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 Hered-itary Gastrointestinal Tumors group of the German Society for General and Visceral Surgery.
This year’s four-day Medica fair also features 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, 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, physio-therapy 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.
Roughly 15 percent of the exhibitors at Medica will showcase their products at Compamed, a smaller conference for medtech manufacturing service providers that runs concurrently with the larger event (Nov. 20-22). Debuting in 1992 with 52 exhibitors, Compamed ballooned this year to encompass 681 exhibitors from 38 nations worldwide and nearly 12,000 square meters of demonstration space. 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 nano-technology, inspection/testing systems and production (assembly, automation, production technology, process technology and packaging).
Two forums taking place at Compamed are spotlighting supplier trends in the medical technology sector. The High-Tech Forum (in Hall 8a) of the IVAM German Industry Association for Microtechnology is focusing on microsystems engineering, nanotechnologies, production engineering and process control, while a Suppliers Forum (in Hall 8b) sponsored by the German trade journal DeviceMed features 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.