Statement on MEDICA 2008

In that period, the total market volume is expected to increase from the current approx. €190 billion to about €320 billion.

But the market is not only growing, it is also characterized by perceptible changes in relation to demand. While cutbacks to the health care budgets in Western Europe and the USA, traditionally the main markets for medical products, have left their mark on the suppliers' balance sheets, the Asian market is proving ever more lucrative. There is growth potential here as a result of an enormous backlog demand. Whether in China, India, Thailand or the Middle East - people can increasingly afford to spend more for their health.

In accordance with this prognosis, leading trade associations and investment companies expect the share of the global market held by the Asia-Pacific area to increase to 25 percent, almost equal to that of the Western European market; it will then have a volume of approx. €84 billion.

As the main barometer of the global market, MEDICA in Düsseldorf, the world’s largest medical trade fair, has already predicted this trend as the result of an enormous backlog demand in Asia. For years, large groups of visitors have been coming from Asian countries. Out of the 137,000 visitors at MEDICA 2007, about 14,400 trade fair visitors traveled from Asia.

Therefore, in spite of restrictive health policy measures in Western Europe and the USA, for many years the unchallenged leaders of the global market, the medical market is still growing and MEDICA, as the main event of the entire sector, is still the pivot of supply and demand. Every year in November, companies from the medical industry, whether large concerns, innovative niche suppliers or ambitious start-up companies, bring to Düsseldorf their latest ideas and developments for better patient care - everything from complex medical technology systems to practical disposable consumer items.

Judging by the application process for MEDICA 2008, the 40th World Forum for Medicine with Congress (19 to 22 November), we can expect another top turn out with more than 4,200 exhibitors from around 60 countries.

Together with the parallel event COMPAMED, the leading international trade fair for the suppliers market in medical manufacturing (exhibition halls 8a and 8b, 19 to 22 November 2008), MEDICA occupies all 19 halls of the Düsseldorf exhibition centre. The trade fair covers the entire field of ambulant and stationary health care, which will be clearly divided into market segments through the appropriate allocation of floor space. Key topics include electro-medicine / medical technology, laboratory technology / diagnostics, physiotherapy / orthopedic technology, medical products (commodities and consumable items), information and communication technology, medical equipment, spatial design and building technology.

No other event in the world can offer this kind of comprehensive and structured overview of the latest medical products and trends.

Permanent features in the program: Congress, Forums and Theme Parks
In addition to everything the exhibitors have to offer, the attractive features that have made MEDICA such a success include theme parks and forums like MEDICA MEDIA (telemedicine / medical IT), MEDICA VISION (innovation forum for the research institutes and universities) and the physiotherapy forum, but also the German-language MEDICA Congress, which last time had 10,000 participants, and the German Hospital Conference (Deutscher Krankenhaustag), the main event of the year for the decision making levels of hospital management.

With the motto "From Research to Practice", the MEDICA congress includes approx. 200 certified seminars and courses and is thereby Germany's largest interdisciplinary advanced training forum. The congress lectures range from prevention to rehabilitation, from homeopathic methods to high-tech medicine, from modern diagnostics to targeted therapies.

The organizer of the MEDICA Congress, the MEDICA Deutsche Gesellschaft für Interdisziplinäre Medizin e.V., lays particular stress on its interdisciplinary point of view. The interdisciplinary approach to complex medical problems, which is especially important in an aging society, is given the highest priority.

MEDICA reduces the broad product range to a common denominator
The practical application of the topics covered in the congress will be immediately evident to the specialist public through the product range of the MEDICA trade fair. The central characteristic of MEDICA, is that the enormous range is clearly structured and reduced to a common denominator. Heterogeneous as the product range offered by industry appears to be, nevertheless it can be clearly encapsulated on the demand side. To be precise, the common denominator is the demand of hospitals, resident doctors and other health service providers. The product range required to meet this demand is covered seamlessly by the exhibitors at MEDICA - everything from disposable syringes, surgical instruments, laboratory machines and implants to pace makers and devices for medical imaging techniques such as ultrasound and endoscopy.

As a result, MEDICA's target audience, in other words the doctors and other decision makers in ambulant and stationary health care units, can get an insight, in one place and at one time, into the full product range of the global big players, the innovative medium-sized enterprises and the ambitious start-up companies.

What distinguishes MEDICA from many smaller exhibitions, which accompany congresses for example, is that the exhibitors do not merely distribute information. Most exhibitors tend to consider MEDICA as an opportunity to introduce almost their whole product portfolio to a public from roughly 100 countries.

A prime example for this is given by the broad product range for ultrasound diagnosis in the field of medical imaging. Advances that contribute to improved image quality and thus enable more precise diagnoses can be tried out immediately with the aid of a test person. Regardless of whether the advances are achieved by optimized software or hardware, or a new generation of contrast agents or modified transducers, at MEDICA, the visitors can get a complete market overview. The same applies to an equally common imaging technique - endoscopy. In this field, laser-based methods for microscopy gave the medical experts plenty to talk about at last year's MEDICA. New technologies enable the generation of images with up to one thousand times enlargement, which corresponds to image representation at cell level.

It is already possible to predict what the next hot topic relating to endoscopy will be at MEDICA 2008 – NOTES (Natural Orifice Transluminal Endoscopic Surgery), surgical intervention using fine incisions through natural orifices. The technology is still considered quite experimental. In terms of suitable tool attachment, instrument development for endoscopy is practically still in its infancy. At the same time, it will be exciting to find out how much progress the medical technology industry has made by MEDICA 2008.

Whatever innovations are presented on the occasion of MEDICA, it is always exciting to observe the competition between the complete package suppliers and the specialists who concentrate on specific market niches.

Without a doubt, the trend is for larger hospitals to meet their procurement requirements from a single source. During MEDICA 2008, it will be possible to evaluate this development from the stand design of the "big players". As a consequence of numerous acquisitions, some of these firms will be presenting almost the entire value added chain of a treatment process - from diagnosis using laboratory technology and imaging, via devices and services for therapy, to medical information technology.

However, the fact that half of the medical products available worldwide are no more than three years old is not entirely due to the market power and development capacity of large concerns. In many cases, it is the smaller suppliers focused on specialized areas who drive the market with their targeted research and development. An example of these is given by certain companies from the laboratory technology and diagnostics sector at MEDICA, who produce molecular medicine based diagnosis applications. One need only cite the protein chips which are increasingly being used in clinical diagnosis for the determination of tumor markers. Many smaller companies are also enjoying great success in the fashionable area of body fitting diagnosis systems, for example, for the determination of blood and heart values. In this connection, the companies can be expected once again to come up with plenty of new products for MEDICA 2008. In some cases, these diagnosis systems can also be used by the health-conscious patients themselves and the results can be evaluated on a home computer.

IT integration strides ahead - MEDICA reveals the trends
In recent years, MEDICA has also gradually consolidated its position as the leading international event for the area of medical IT. At MEDICA 2007, a total of 38,000 trade fair visitors were interested in this topic, which was covered by the 463 exhibitors with products and services for medical IT, and in the content of the theme park MEDICA MEDIA.

This MEDICA success story has been borne aloft on the trend towards complete IT integration in medical health care. The problem of creating centrally available patient data and a communicative network that connects the stationary and ambulant sectors presents a huge challenge, which raises many questions and demands suitable system solutions.

This initial situation will once again be given consideration at MEDICA 2008, under the headings of eHealth and telematic applications. With the clarification of financial and security aspects still pending, the introduction of the electronic Patient Card and the electronic Health Profession Card may drag on a bit longer in Germany. Ultimately, however, the importance of pursuing the optimization of patient workflow will force all participants to make sustainable compromises.

In this connection, the imminent market entry of large Internet companies could prove salutary and may precipitate a faster agreement. After all, when a search machine giant and, in parallel, the world’s largest software company announce separately that they would like to offer all health conscious people a centrally stored electronic patient file, this cannot be without impact on the health insurers and the doctors' professional associations.

If at some point patients, motivated by their own interest in the acceleration and improvement of their treatment, go ahead and put their health data on the Internet and make this available as required to doctors and therapist, this would indeed amount to a revolution.

All of this allows us look to forward with excitement to MEDICA 2008. It will be especially interesting to see what solutions the well-established companies have come up with and to what extent political representatives, the medical community and the health insurers can be brought to a common understanding, so that they can ultimately keep a hand on the tiller.

Along with the topics of "electronic patient files", "electronic health cards" and "medical data networks", a host of new medical devices for the area of "telemonitoring", that is, the remote supervision of chronically ill patients, is sure to provide matter for discussion at MEDICA 2008. Development tends towards ever more compact and easy-to-handle systems, which make it possible to transmit measured data to a radio device and then via Internet connection to the treating doctor. What was initially waved aside as mere gadgetry has gradually matured into a serious option for the uncomplicated treatment of patients with higher supervision requirements.

Lucrative market on the door step of MEDICA
The many examples mentioned above show that MEDICA 2008 permits a detailed view of individual segments of the medical industry and, at the same time and in the place gives, an overview of the whole spectrum of medical innovations, from simple products to high-tech systems. This is an ideal opportunity for trade fair visitors to acquire an accurate market overview and to take a peek beyond the horizons of their own core interests.

The reason why MEDICA has become so attractive to exhibitors is first and foremost the level of internationality of the trade fair visitors (more than 40%). Participation in MEDICA is accordingly a gateway to many national markets and also facilitates the maintenance of existing transnational customer contacts.

At the same time, the market on the "doorstep" of MEDICA is also very lucrative. In a radius of two hours drive, there are 1000 hospitals with a capacity of more than 170,000 beds. A total of 52,000 doctors are resident in this vicinity. In the state of North Rhine-Westphalia alone there are currently more than a million people employed in the health industry. Experts estimate that the number will grow by a further 20 percent by 2015.

The total volume of the German market for medical technologies and medical products is another important reason for participation in MEDICA. Despite health policy restrictions, it amounts to almost €20 billion. After the USA and JAPAN, Germany is the world’s most important sales market, followed by other national markets in the direct vicinity of MEDICA: France (€9 billion), Italy (€6.2 billion) and the United Kingdom (€5.8 billion).

Finally, a brief word on event statistics. MEDICA celebrated its premiere in 1969 with 135 exhibitors and about 4,700 visitors. Last year, in spite of the train strikes, MEDICA 2007 was able to consolidate on the top figures from MEDICA 2006: 137,000 trade fair visitors were able to learn about the product ranges of the more than 4,200 exhibitors from 65 countries.

MEDICA.de: All Information Just a Click Away
All information regarding the individual components of the MEDICA event, the participating exhibitors and their products can be viewed on the bilingual Internet portal at http://www.medica.de.

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