MEDICA and COMPAMED 2013 keeping pace with the market

GOOD international business contacts are becoming increasingly important for manufacturers of medical technology and medical products. Only those that are well-positioned at the international level are able to balance weaknesses in individual markets and profit in the long run from a market that, seen globally, is growing. That is the key message conveyed after four days of events (20-23 November 2013) at MEDICA 2013, the world’s largest medical trade fair, and COMPAMED 2013 (20–22 November 2013), the leading trade fair for the supplier market for medical technology manufacturing. More than half of the some 132,000 trade visitors (2012: 130,600) came from abroad, arriving from more than 120 countries. From the 4,641 exhibitors representing 66 countries, visitors obtained information on the entire spectrum of new products for high-quality, efficient medical care – ranging from medical technology and electromedicine, laboratory technology, physiotherapy products and orthopaedic technology to health IT. 

“We have observed a growing number of visitors in recent years particularly from those emerging countries that are especially promising for the medical technology industry, namely from among Asian countries, from India, Russia as well as South America and China,” stated Joachim Sch?fer, managing director of the Messe Düsseldorf, which has solidly positioned MEDICA as a leading platform for the global “MedTech” business, with an unrivalled level of internationality.

This assessment is shared by Germany’s leading industry associations: SPECTARIS, ZVEI and BVMed draw attention to the significance of exports in their current market forecasts on MEDICA 2013. According to these reports, international business in the meantime accounts for 68 percent of the almost 23 billion euros in current annual revenues generated by medical technology in Germany. “Not only is the export quota high. Foreign trade is almost the only factor driving growth. “On the other hand, competition in the German market is tough, not least because of the many international players,” Tobias Weiler, managing director of SPECTARIS, explained. 
The German Medical Technology Association (BVMed) sees purchasing pools as the reason for increasing pressure on prices in Germany. Such concentration of purchasing power is a further market trend reflected at MEDICA. “The number of entities maintaining hospitals is decreasing. Demand is thus becoming concentrated in increasingly larger medical care networks and hospital groups. Consequently, especially high-level decision-makers are attending MEDICA,” noted Horst Giesen, director of MEDICA + COMPAMED with Messe Düsseldorf, underscoring the senior decision-making powers of visitors to MEDICA. More than 80 percent play a major role or provide expert advice in purchasing decisions. 

Practical know-how for everyone – specialised knowledge for expert groups 
To accommodate, through both trade fair and conference events, the continually growing number of international visitors seen in recent years, the previous conference programme was completely revised for MEDICA 2013.

The newly planned Medica Education Conference was well attended on every day of the event. The conference included, on the one hand as a necessary bNew Balance