"Since the very beginning of the MEDICA, our company has been attended the trade fair", explains Ralf Claußen, Head of Communication of Eppendorf. "That meant that our presence has become a matter of tradition. Additionally, it is simply important for branding."

Torsten Hofsäss, spokesman for medical products at Technogym, came with very high expectations and is very content: "We nearly fulfilled all our expectations. Even though we did not have more contacts than in the previous year, we did have qualitatively higher ones. At least one third of them was international."

"We had lots of attention at the booth, especially after our seminar", Daniel Schäfer, Managing Director of Vibrogym, says. "Nearly all of the participants of the seminar came and tried our devices. Beyond that, we got in touch with many customers. Overall, it has been a very successful event for us."

"This was our fifth or sixth time at MEDICA", says Anja Friedrich from Management Marketing and Sales Microbiology of Bioservice Scientific Laboratories GmbH. "This year was by far the best for us. In past times, we called customers during the run-up to the trade fair to offer them free tickets. Now they come to see us without prior contact."

"COMPAMED has been very international as always and the majority of visitors were experts in their field", Uwe Kleinkes, Managing Director of Ivam Research, highlights. "We had customers from the USA, Canada and Asia and deepened the cooperation with other companies. We were very happy that we were able to introduce new topics successfully."

"It has been the second and certainly not the last time that we came here", says Katrin Schröter of Marketing and Sales of Askion. "The great thing about COMPAMED is that most of the visitors that come to our booth have concrete requests and ideas that we can talk over straight away."

"When MEDICA opened and crowds of people rushed into the halls I thought that there must be something for free here." Jörg Pfeiffer, head of Marketing Germany of Toshiba, laughs. "In particular we have made contacts with a lot of visitors from the Middle East. My Russian colleague was also very busy." Toshiba is a pioneer of MEDICA: the company has attended the trade fair more than 30 times.

"The high amount of visitors is mirrored very precisely in incoming orders and in sales figures", Annette Halstrick, press officer of Philips Healthcare, says. "We have made contracts and orders in all areas. Business is buzzing."

"We even had 20 polytechnic students visiting us", Daniel Poeschkens, head of communication of Gematik, reports. "We make telematics experiencable at our stand. I predict telematics a great future."

"We were able to position our new product very well here", explains Dagmar Baust, spokeswoman in the field of health care of the Finnish-Swedish company Tieto Ennator. "It has entered the market now and we received very good feedback. That is very important."

Pasquale Cimmino visits MEDICA every year. His company distributes medical products for orthopaedics and incontinence. “This is just the right place to establish contacts.”

In Frankfurt, Germany, these three are studying physiotherapy. “Every second year staff from the Orthopaedic Clinic visit MEDICA with a bus full of trainees”, explains Anja Kessner. Her favourite topic: “Craniosacral therapy. Since this is not a main topic at university.”

“Very well organised.” That is Adnan Khan’s opinion about MEDICA. He is banker and accompanies his father, a producer of medical instruments, during the fair visit. He is very impressed by the wide product range.

„We want to see which products we are talking about at work”, says Dorothee Redemann. She calculates costs of auxiliary means for an insurance company. Therefore, she and her colleague inform themselves about enteral nutrition. Martina Petry’s last visit to MEDICA was 15 years ago: “Since then a lot of things have changed.”

Pedro Paes meets producers and is interested in innovative products: “The trade fair is so large!” He is amazed. He travelled here from South America for the first time and is curious about the things he will discover.

Next to each other, the two Chinese women are strolling from booth to booth. They want to get information on medical technology – for their study in Wilhelmshaven, Germany. “There are so many big companies. This is interesting for us since we are searching for a traineeship.”

The Swede Rolf Wikström is a regular visitor: “I have been visiting MEDICA for the last 20 years to meet distributors”, he says. The thing important to him: “MEDICA is nearer and consequently cheaper for me than other fairs.”

Soledad Diaz has already found something interesting: „My favourite product is an IT programme for clinical pharmacy. She will return to Chile with many impressions and information on new techniques.

As a distributor for disposable articles and medical diagnostics Matthias Kelch is checking if his products are sold properly. The reason why a visit of MEDICA is important? “Because here you can get the broadest overview of the medical branch”, he resumes.

“Some products concerned with mammography and radiology impressed me very much”, says Dennis Liu. The long journey from China to MEDICA in Dusseldorf was certainly worth it.

Annika Fröhlich is a student of the polytechnic Rhein-Ahr-Campus in Remagen, Germany, and visits MEDICA in order to get information on biomechanics for her diploma. “And information important for my further job-related development”, she says.

Reinhard Hafellner works in the area of plastics technology. The combination of the fairs COMPAMED and MEDICA is important to him: on one hand because he is looking for packaging materials on the former and for product innovations on the latter.

COMPAMED 2008 and its 519 exhibitors from 30 countries offer components, lab equipment and technologies for medical devices in halls 8a and 8b. Special trend: miniaturisation.

IVAM, the professional association for microtechnology, organises the forum and the special show on the COMPAMED, hall 8. The successful product market "High-tech for Medical Devices" is offered by the IVAM as joint stand.

The picture shows the IVAM Forum in hall 8a.

Optical glass fibres... quicker is not possible. To find at the COMPAMED in hall 8B.

Top-quality pvc granules in all imaginable colours and forms are shown in hall 8A. The most important application areas for pvc granules are cabels, tubes, shoe soles and medical hoses.

Amazing products on the COMPAMED 2008: You can find this eyecatcher of the company KRISTRONICS in hall 8A.

Optical filters and polarizors are used in many ways, e.g. in microscopy.

The COMPAMED 2008 and its 519 exhibitors from 30 nations offer a broad spectrum of subproducts, equipments and technologies for medical devices in the halls 8a und 8b. Especially in line with the current trend is the miniaturisation of constructional elements.

Also dental products and components are exhibited on the COMPAMED. The picture shows an articulator, a product of the company Sycotec. Articulators are devices to simulate the jawbone joint movement. They simulate the movement of both parts of the jawbone towards each other which is essential for the manufacturing of dental protheses and bite splints.

Jumping into cold water can have fatal consequences, in the worst case heart failure. If this danger is lurking, the emergency medical services have to act without hesitating.

Rescue lives with the smallest heart-lungs-machine of the world: The portable device is called Cardiohelp, has the size of a handbag and weighs less than ten kilograms. Therefore, it can be used immediately on location or in the ambulance. The device replaces the functions of the heart and the lung: Blood is taken from the patient’s veins and returns into the body after having been enriched with oxygen.

It has the size of a paperback book and is supposed to improve the patient’s quality of life: the new telemetry monitor. Pulse and heart frequency, breathing or body temperature can be checked on a regular basis without tying the patient to the bed with the new „Infinity M300“. Advantageous since it is well known that higher mobility often results in a faster patient recovery.

Did an emergency patient take drugs or not? With the „DrugTest 5000“, this question can be answered in ten minutes. The system recognises six different substance classes in a saliva sample: cannabis, cocaine and opiates amongst others. Examining blood in the laboratory may be a thing of the past. The uncomplicated and hygienic handling may make the quick test also attractive for traffic controls.

The „VenoTrain sport“ is a new surgical hose designed especially for sportsmen. An exactly defined pressure onto the vein prevents that fluids accumulate in the tissue and cause "heavy" legs. This procedure reduces swellings of the legs after a long distance run.

An all-rounder among the ultrasound systems is the LOGIQ E 9. The device is able to combine several imaging techniques during one medical examination and improves diagnosis. This is important since it is often not sufficient to determine a tumour’s location with just one imaging system. The LOGIQ E 9 loads CT or MRI data into the ultrasound device. The physician can subsequently compare images made with the help of these different techniques.

Safety in medicine is valuable, but it also entails considerable demands. For the first time, the Lampertz and Gesundheitsinformatik companies display their combined minimum-sized computational centre, offering the same protective value as a large computer centre. It is, in fact, a data safe taking up only one square metre of ground space. Inbuilt devices (servers, storage and networking units) satisfy the standards imposed by Germany’s Federal Data Protection Act (BDSG) and those laid down by the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI). They make for secure implementations of tele-medicine applications as well as for secure transmission of image, graphics and text file data. Thanks to the unique modular design of this “Modulsafe LMS 9.3”, the device may be sited flexibly in surgeries and hospitals.

For patients it very often sounds like “Double Dutch” if their doctors try to explain a disease or medical interventions to them. Not very many people know the structure of their hearts or what their kidneys look like. Extra-large models of bodily organs offer help. Patients can walk them with their medical doctors, who may explain necessary medical interventions to them in detail. These models may, of course, also be used for demonstration purposes in universities or for congresses. They are available for both leasing and purchasing. A human-sized model heart may be inspected during the MEDICA congress (CCD South, ground floor). A model breast is on display on the first floor, close to the footpath leading to the pavilion.