137,000 visited Medica 2007

The specialist world consisting of doctors’ surgeries, clinics, laboratories, the trade and industry, seized the opportunity and was present in Düsseldorf in impressive numbers. Over the four days of the fair, despite considerable disruption caused by the nationwide rail strike, the events still attracted approx. 137,000 trade visitors from around 100 countries to the Rhine (2006: 137,500 visitors). The share of international visitors was 40 percent. They were shown a broad spectrum of innovations and new products for ambulant and stationary care, clearly structured according to product groups, by the total of over 4,300 exhibitors at MEDICA. “Once again this year MEDICA has clearly succeeded in confirming its highly significant international status. This is because it presents not only a cross-section of medical supplies, but also the complete range including all its interface aspects”, said Wilhelm Niedergöker, Managing Director Messe Düsseldorf, explaining a key success factor for MEDICA, which he then followed with an example: “Anyone who obtains information about state-of-the-art medical imaging systems will also directly find out at MEDICA how these appliances can be integrated in the existing IT infrastructure.” With regard to the rail strikes, Wilhelm Niedergöker singled out the MEDICA visitors for special praise: “Normally more than one in five visitors travel to the event by train. Due to the rail strike, many managed to respond flexibly in good time and switched over to their cars.” One focal point at MEDICA 2007 was that of “eHealth” and telematic applications. In this connection, the “electronic health card” and “medical data networks” themes were covered by MEDICA MEDIA (the Telemedicine Trade Forum and Theme Park), which interacted perfectly with the exhibitors’ ranges of medical IT innovations focussing on the “electronic patient’s file”. Apart from this the trend-setters include compact medical products, which actively integrate the health-conscious patient in relation to prevention and fast treatment success. In many cases these products can be used by the patients themselves. Examples of this are innovative, handy electro-therapy systems for pain-relief therapy applications as well as a broad spectrum of diagnosis appliances for the fast measuring of the most diverse body parameters. Thanks to wireless radio transmission, an increasing number of these products are even in a position to transfer the medical data via telephone modem and Internet directly to the treating physician. This promises major advantages, especially in the area of long-distance surveillance of chronically-ill patients. Congress programme with many themes and a good response Once again this year the MEDICA Congress had a whole range of themes in store, from disease prevention and state-of-the-art diagnostics through to telemedicine up to emergency medicine or also legal issues. Definite focal points for the total of more than 150 seminars and lecture events were themes on cardiac diseases, diabetes, preventive medicine, pain-relief therapies or also illnesses and diseases in advanced age. The 30th German Hospital Conference on the event’s main theme, “Shaping the Future”, was held in keeping with the restructuring processes in the German clinic service. 1,800 participants informed themselves about perspectives for the total of around 2,100 German clinics in the field of tension between fee-per-case invoicing, increasingly fiercer competition as well as the desire for the best possible treatment quality. COMPAMED, the international trade fair for upstream suppliers in medical production, was already held concurrently with MEDICA. In addition to Hall 8a, 460 exhibitors (2006: 320) also occupied the new Hall 8b for the first time. They presented the total of more than 13,000 visitors with a comprehensive spectrum of high-tech solutions for application in the medical technology industry – ranging from new materials, components, intermediate products, packaging and services up to complex micro-system technology and nanotechnology.