COMPAMED 2012 : High tech solutions for medical technology

There is hardly any other industry that is as innovation-driven as medical technology. On average, European “medtech” companies invest about eight percent of their turnover in the research and development of new products. In many cases the product life cycle is less than two years. Anyone who wants to keep up with this rate of development and thus the growth of the market needs to mesh their company’s internal processes with those of the suppliers as well as possible. This includes, primarily, the need to answer the question of to what extent new devices, products and instruments should be developed and produced in house and which processes are better delegated to suppliers.

The suppliers to the MedTech industry at every level of the value creation chain demonstrate that they are powerful partners impressively every year at the leading market and communication platform for their industry, COMPAMED in Düsseldorf.
The fact that COMPAMED is held in parallel to the world’s largest medical trade fair, MEDICA, and thus the No. 1 international event for medical technology vendors proves to be a key success factor, because this unique combination allows COMPAMED and MEDICA to represent the entire process chain and the full range of medical products, devices and instruments.
The strong interest in bookings suggests that participation at COMPAMED 2012 (14 - 16 November) in Halls 8a and 8b, will at least match the record figures seen last year, with over 600 exhibitors from around 35 different countries covering about 11,300 square metres of space.

Together, COMPAMED and MEDICA (approx. 4,500 exhibitors) will once again completely fill the Düsseldorf Trade Fair Centre.
Whereas the programme at MEDICA is primarily aimed at users of medical technology, the majority of visitors attending COMPAMED are engineers, developers and buyers from the medical technology industry (exhibitors at MEDICA). In 2011 the two fairs welcomed a total of 134,500 trade visitors, 16,000 of whom were specifically interested in the topics covered by COMPAMED.

The service sector is exemplary for the ever-closer cooperation between suppliers and “MedTech” vendors. Whereas the suppliers used to primarily act as partners for the production of certain parts and components, they are now being increasingly integrated in subsequent stages of the product life cycle, and even in after sales service. Exhibitors such as those who present their goods and services at COMPAMED frequently offer services in this field. Sometimes they even have complete responsibility for spare parts handling – ranging from the cost-effective post production of components, proper storage, in some cases for extended periods, to rapid on-site delivery. In some cases, the suppliers even act as contract manufacturers for complete medical devices and products. Be it an ECG unit, a defibrillator or a lab application for rapid point-of-care diagnostics, the suppliers offer an ever-longer list of “complete” systems and products including complex testing services for quality assurance. For customers this has the advantage that they can concentrate on their core areas of expertise, while simultaneously being able to offer a full range of products, because both in- and outpatient users value the provision of goods and services “from a single source”.

Examples of the close cooperation between suppliers and medical technology manufacturers are also revealed by current technology trends. Modern operating technology, such as that which the users are already familiar with from their smartphones and tablet computers are having an increasing impact on the development of new operating and menu structures for medical devices. And that is no surprise, as no doctor has time, in what is often a very hectic hospital working environment, to find their way through a complicated structure of menus and submenus, which, in the worst case, are entirely different from one device to another. An intuitive user interface is what is called for. While the response to this demand can be seen at MEDICA, for instance in the form of a touchscreen ultrasound device as a complete system, exhibitors at COMPAMED present information on how multifaceted the development of such “medical human machine interfaces” is. The glass screens need to be flush with the facade, easy to disinfect and also need to be usable with gloves. In addition to this, they need to meet very demanding requirements with respect to reliability, as they need to comply with the regulatory requirements for medical devices and, of course, also need to be capable of integration in various computer architectures and operating systems.

Making technically complex systems easy to operate is also one of the main challenges for equipment solutions in the field of telemedicine. Here the successful interaction between suppliers and medical technology vendors (MEDICA exhibitors) is also evident. At the end of the day, innovative sensors, device software and microcomponents are just as important as the marketing of the finished units in the context of an appropriate business model for remote patient monitoring and care.

Apart from featuring developments in the field of technical components, COMPAMED always puts the limelight on material innovations, too. This applies particularly to plastics, which are now used to make over half of all medical devices produced. On the face of it, many of these products seem simple, but if you take a second look the significance of the technological achievement becomes apparent. At COMPAMED 2011, for example, plasticizers with a specific toxicological profile specially developed for sensitive applications which come into close contact with humans, such as for catheters, breathing masks and even in blood bags and dialysis equipment, were presented. As well as this, items made of PVC, which contain plasticizers, also retain their technical properties after sterilisation.

Comprehensive information is available online from http://www.compamed.de and http://www.medica.de

Source: Messe Düsseldorf GmbH