There is Predict, a healthcare company that analyzes what we breathe out to monitor health in a non-invasive way, which has become a partner of GE Healthcare, and is now testing its Mistral device from the Bari Polyclinic to the CDC Pederzoli Hospital in Peschiera del Garda. Or Modis, a specialized company of The Adecco Group, which launched the European Fractal project to apply artificial intelligence and the study of fractal networks to the ocular fundus and diagnose eye anomalies and pathologies in advance.
On the Day of Innvoation, the Confindustria Medical Devices Study Center marks the fourth Italian place at EU level (and twelfth at world level) for the number of patents in the medical device sector. Italy is attributed a share of 1.8% of the total, in a ranking that in 2019 still saw the US dominate, from which almost 36% of patents come, ahead of Japan and China. Patents characterized, claims the association, by an excellent approval rate, often higher than the European average, as proof of the innovation capacity of companies.
If you look at the number of patents presented to the Epo, the European Patent Agency, the medical technology sector is the one in which most of the applications have converged. And the data is not surprising, also in consideration of the health emergency. From the reconstruction of the Study Center, it emerges that the Italian market is worth 16.7 billion euros between exports and the domestic market and has 4,323 companies, which employ 94,153 employees. In the mix of the industrial fabric there are large and small companies, which however reckon with the fact that per capita public expenditure on medical devices is on average 102 euros, a value below the average of the main European countries. At a territorial level, the regions where public health is the strongest, spending rises, while it falls where private health is very widespread.
There are 329 start-ups and innovative SMEs active in the sector: biotechnologies, 3D printing, robotics, advanced materials, ICT, photonics and nanotechnologies. Massimiliano Boggetti, president of Confindustria medical devices, asks that they be adequately supported: “If, with the pandemic, the government has understood that the medical devices sector is strategic for the country and has said that it wants to invest to create the development of our companies in Italy, supporting research is an obligatory path. At a global level, medical devices is one of the fastest growing production sectors and one of its main distinguishing elements is innovation “. Yet investments in research and development, he denounces, have “decreased in recent years due to one of the highest tax rates compared to large countries and in Italy compared to other sectors”.
Next month, new community rules will be launched for the marketing of medical devices, with more control and certification steps that guarantee greater safety and reliability. A factor which, says Boggetti, “makes the commitment of small and medium-sized producers even more onerous and some even risk not being able to cope with costs and close. Primary Site was born from this need, a project that is committed to creating a ” physical and virtual area of collaboration between Confindustria Medical Devices, Confindustria Medical Devices Services, Milan Innovation District (MIND) and IRCCS Galeazzi to guarantee concrete, practical and theoretical support for the validation and monitoring process to SMEs and start-ups . All this will be possible within the great center of excellence that is being born in Milan, the Mind, which we hope will become a European reference model for research and development in the medical-scientific field “.
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