Digital Health-Focused Innovation Forum Announced for MEDICA

The internationally leading medical trade fair MEDICA, has been successful for over half a century and will be held on November 11-14, 2024, at the fairgrounds in Düsseldorf, Germany. Applications for participation in this year’s MEDICA Start-Up Competition and Healthcare Innovation World Cup are now open. 
 
The MEDICA Innovation Form is the successor event to the MEDICA Connected Healthcare Forum and will be held right in the center of the “Digital Health” sphere of MEDICA this year. 
 
“This is where we discuss the most important topics for the future, from the Internet of Things to robotics, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and digital twins as well as mobile health and medical wearables, 3D printing, and solutions for the hospital of the future. Because digital innovations are not limited to optimized connections between all healthcare players, the forum will focus on the digital transformation of the healthcare industry in its entirety. After all, start-up presentations recently already clearly reflected this wider scope of content. The popular pitch competitions will remain a fundamental part of the program”, explained Christian Grosser, Director of MEDICA at Messe Düsseldorf.
 
MEDICA is expecting over 8,000 forum participants this year. The Innovation Forum will host discussions with many industry experts. Some speakers include Prof. Stephen Gilbert of the Dresden University of Technology. He recently called for LLM-based generative chat tools such as ChatGPT and MedPaLM to be approved as medical devices. Robotics experts Lorenzo Masia, Heidelberg, and André Brauers, Global Head of Immersive and Digital Education Solutions at Siemens Healthineers, will also contribute topics for discussion.  

MEDICA Start-Up Competition 2024

MEDICA will host the 13th Start-Up Competition in a variety of categories including ‘AI in medicine’, ‘health apps’, ‘robotics’, ‘lab diagnostics’, and ‘other’. The top 12 companies of 2024 will present their solutions on November 12. 
 
Last year’s first-place prize went to “MeMed BV”, the first diagnostic test that was approved by the FDA and received a CE label that can use serum or venous blood to differentiate between bacterial and viral infections in just 15 minutes.
 
The second-place winner from 2023, Ventrject, offers its Seismofit system on markets in Denmark, Germany, Great Britain and Ireland. The system records cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF), measured as VO2-max.

Start-Ups and Scale-Ups at MEDICA

This year, the MEDICA Start-Up Park is recommended as a central contact point for networking with the start-up scene. In the joint area of the special show, 50 companies will provide information about their creative ideas and concrete solutions for modern healthcare.  
 
Over 6,000 exhibitors from around 70 countries are expected to participate in MEDICA 2024 and COMPAMED 2024, the concurrently held supplier trade fair. Last year, both events recorded 83,000 trade visitors from more than 160 countries.