Posted on over 1 year ago by Laurentina Kennedy
Mirandola is the largest biomedical district in Europe and third in the world after Minneapolis and Los Angeles in the United States. Photo: Wiki/Creative Commons
For the medical devices industry, there are few places on the planet as important as the Mirandola Biomedical District.
North of the Italian city of Modena in the Emilia Romagna region, Mirandola is home to a significant cluster of more than 300 related companies.
In fact, it’s the largest biomedical district in Europe and third in the world after Minneapolis and Los Angeles in the United States, making it an incredibly important and fertile market for Irish medical device and medical technology (medtech) businesses.
Italy is also the third largest market for medical equipment in the EU, after Germany and France.
This week, 12 Irish medtech companies visited Mirandola to meet local business leaders as part of an Enterprise Ireland trade delegation aimed at driving further trade and collaboration.
After all, Ireland is also of strategic importance in this sector, as it is one of the top five global medtech hubs, along with Massachusetts, Minnesota, California and Israel.
Mirandola created €1.6bn in added value for the Italian economy in 2020
Along with holding more than 40 meetings between representatives of 12 Irish and 16 Italian companies, the group also made site visits to some of the most important medical device manufacturers in the Emilia-Romagna region.
Among these visits was a factory tour of Orthofix, a US orthopaedics company which has a significant presence in Italy.
Marking the strategic importance of the trade visit, the Ambassador of Ireland to Italy, Patricia O’Brien, hosted a gala dinner for C-level Irish and Italian medical devices executives while the Irish delegation was in Italy.
Mirandola created €1.6bn in added value for the Italian economy in 2020. Companies in the cluster specialise in disposable plastic products for medical and healthcare use.
They are also looking ahead, and investing in regenerative medicine, for example. This looks to break down the boundaries between biomedical and pharma, medical devices and therapies.
This signposts particular opportunity for Irish firms. There are about 450 medtech and medtech-related, companies in Ireland.
They design and produce products across a swathe of medicine and healthcare, including infusion solutions, haemodialysis, anaesthesia, continuous renal replacement therapies, cardiovascular and more.
There are about 450 medtech, and medtech-related, companies in Ireland