It is mid-November and we are getting ready to go to Düsseldorf and the international fair Compamed/Medica. COMPAMED is one of the largest trade fairs in the world for the medical technology supplier sector, held once a year, and “everyone” in the industry is there.
17 halls are fully booked with medical technology suppliers of some sort. In the exhibition halls, the latest innovations in medical technology are showcased during four intensive days.
An exciting year this year as we come together
What is exciting this year is that we will showcase all the medical products offered by Alleima in our booth. Our Exera® ultra-fine wire is as thin as 10 µm, which is about 10 times thinner than a human hair. Wire-based components where these ultra-thin wires are twisted, stranded, or coiled to various forms, the finest tubes where the outside diameter is as fine as 0,25 mm.
Inside these fine tubes, we can insert a fine wire and this entity creates an EMG needle used to check muscle nerve dysfunctions. We also produce precision medical tubes in stainless steel in slightly larger diameters, 0.5-25.4 mm, used for example in bone screws, spinal screws and bone nails. Our in-house production of medical tubes allows for tailor-made sizes in small batches.
Nitinol, bone screws, and advanced strip steel
We will also showcase our latest addition to the product portfolio – nitinol products and instruments. This smart and flexible material has so many interesting features perfectly suited for the medical devices of the future. And not least we will showcase our advanced strip steel used in bone saws or scalpels that can retain extreme sharpness.
Advanced strip steel is also used in reconstruction plates or microtome blades. And did you know - for the strip steel Alleima has over 100 years of manufacturing experience and today we can make clean steel with fine-grain microstructures and precision every time. Check out our medical offering here www.alleima.com/medical
Thinking outside the box and finding solutions
Exhibitions are a valuable and precious arena for the medical business. It’s a place where we meet current or future customers. In our fine-wire business where we are selling more solutions, it is of greatest value to meet in person - discuss, make drawings of the idea, and get back to our engineers to see what the best solution to realize that idea is.
Many times, my colleagues have heard new customers’ state; ‘why didn’t we meet you sooner, that would have saved us years of development time’. My engineering colleagues are just so good at thinking outside the box and finding solutions that you didn’t think were possible.
At the same time, medical components are getting smaller and smaller for minimally invasive surgeries. These components were already small before… We have discussed those trends at our microsite hosted by Global Data. Check it out here Precision medical wire Archives - Medical Device Network (medicaldevice-network.com)
Many interesting days ahead
Parallel with the fair are also two large forums – Compamed Suppliers Forum and Compamed High-Tech Forum, that offer exciting presentations by experts from the industry and are an opportunity to network with other professionals. Alleima is again a partner to IVAM (IVAM - IVAM Microtechnology Network), which is hosting the High-Tech forum.
My colleague Dr. Bernd Vogel, former owner and CEO at Endosmart, now Global Technology and Innovation manager at Alleima Business Unit Medical, will do a speech 
Dr Bernd Vogel at the networking session “Europe meets USA” November 14th. Bernd will speak about Removing the Roadblocks: Plotting a Path for Medical Device Innovation.
Check out the schedule here and join if you are on site IVAM - Europe meets USA - Part 4 at COMPAMED
Dr Bernd Vogel is a well-known expert in nitinol processing. This material has so many interesting features – super elastic, flexible, and not the least smart. Bernd fell in love with the material when he first started to work with it some 20+ years ago.
We see many interesting areas for this material in the medical devices of the future, for example, soft robotics. Check out more about this exciting material here www.alleima.com/nitinol
Now the suitcase soon is fully packed for takeoff to Düsseldorf, Germany. I really look forward to meeting colleagues, new and old customers, and other people who are attending the various tradeshows around the world and that you enjoy meeting and discussing the medical field that is evolving at a high speed with remote monitoring devices, wearables of different sorts, etc. I hope to see you if you are at Compamed – we are in hall 8a, booth J15 (Alleima Advanced Materials Corporation of Palm Coast, FL at COMPAMED 2023 in Düsseldorf -- COMPAMED Trade Fair (compamed-tradefair.com)). Welcome by!
