Medica

MEDICA, one of the world’s largest medical trade fairs and congresses saw its fortieth anniversary on 18-21 November in Dusseldorf in Germany. The fair is an opportunity for decision makers from across the world to come and discover the latest technologies and innovations, for professional development, networking and discovery.

Over the four days of the event, MEDICA registered almost 138,000 trade visitors from over 100 countries (previous year: 137,000 visitors). 45% of visitors came from abroad (2008: 42%), a particularly high number also travelled to Düsseldorf from the Asian growth markets and the Arab region.

4,324 exhibitors (2008: 4,279) from around 60 nations offered them a clearly segmented line-up with a plethora of new products, systems and services for the entire process chain in both in and out-patient care.

“The medical technology sector has met the efforts made to cut costs in the healthcare industry worldwide with a sparkling array of product innovations, which are a known way of cutting costs”, said Wilhelm Niedergöker, CEO of Messe Düsseldorf, emphasising the strength of the “MedTech” industry, in an allusion to the current studies published by the trade associations ZVEI and SPECTARIS on the potential savings that can be achieved by using state-of-the-art medical technology.

Telemedicine is Forging Ahead – in Outpatient as Well as Inpatient Care

Not only in hospital operating theatres or in doctors’ surgeries are the new innovations in the field of medical technology presented at MEDICA 2009 already being put to use. Patients are also being increasingly included in outpatient care, too. The trend towards home medicine and telemedicine applications continues unabated. While in the past electronic thermometers were the only medical devices to be found in private homes, these days we see the advent of measuring devices for a wide variety of vital data such as mini ECG sets, for instance. The opportunities presented by these “self-payer products” in terms of prevention and remote patient monitoring appear to be far from exhausted so far. For example, there were various heart monitoring systems that are incorporated in clothing, which are currently still at the experimental stage, on show at MEDICA 2009. They are comfortable to wear and make for uncomplicated patient monitoring over extended periods of time.

The MEDICA Congress once again had a wide range of topics on offer this year. The international continuous medical education module in English, which was included in the programme for the first time, attracted a lot of attention. Integral diagnostics and therapy in the fields of oncology, patient monitoring at ORs/ICUs and trends in the area of heart surgery were the main topics that met with great interest. Another international event was dedicated to palliative medical care and special care concepts for people in the final stages of life.

“Hospital Policy after the General Elections” was the guiding theme of the 32nd German Hospital Conference, attended by 2,215 participants interested in finding out more about the current health policy plans of the various political parties in the German Parliament for the 17th legislative period and their potential financial impact on hospitals.

For more information, please visit: www.medica.de