MAGIA project kick-off meeting

Medtech Alliance for Global InternationAlisation

The Kick-Off Meeting of the newly launched European Medtech Alliance dedicated to support SME Internationalisation was held in Colleretto Giacosa (Italy) on January 15-16^th, 2018.

The MAGIA project brings together four European leading Medtech and Health clusters – BioPmed (Piedmont), BioWin (Wallonia), Life Science Nord (Northern Germany) and Lyonbiopole (Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes) – willing to foster and support the Medtech SME’s internationalisation through the creation of a strong and sustainable Medtech Alliance.

The overall goal of the project is to provide support to the European Medtech SMEs to go international on two global target markets and to make the European Medtech industry more visible at the international level.

The global medtech sector can be a tough environment for European small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and start-ups. In Europe, this industry is mainly composed of SMEs, representing 95% of the sector, which face numerous obstacles. Among the main obstacles we can mention: competition with large groups while searching for collaboration with them, stronger regulatory environments, the need of integrating diverse technologies in their products, etc.

In order to overcome these barriers, the Medtech Alliance aims to build a strong mutual understanding among the 4 clusters by identifying their assets and synergies in order to strengthen their collaboration. In this respect, 4 cluster study visits are planned in the next months, as well as working groups involving SMEs to assess their internationalisation needs and to identify the two most relevant target markets. To better address the foreign markets that will be selected, a series of intelligence and training actions dedicated to SMEs will be performed.

Based on all these activities, the partners will have the necessary information to develop a common sound and realistic internationalisation strategy to provide added value for the SMEs as well as for the competitiveness of the Medtech sector in Europe.