The healthcare industry is a strategically important future sector and economic factor in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. It is one of the leading industries in the state. It has a successful network called BioCon Valley® that came into existence in 2001, providing important impetus for the industry.
“The state has the hardware: lots of nature and lovely countryside. The companies and facilities in the sector provide the software. Together, they constitute the healthcare sector as a resilient growth engine,” summarises Lars Bauer, managing director of BioCon Valley® GmbH. The firm was founded in 2001 as a state company in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, shortly after the eponymous association, which is also shareholder of the GmbH at the same time. BioCon Valley® is the healthcare sector network for Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. The role it performs as state service provider has seen it become a linchpin in recent years. “We are the sector’s networkers and catalysts, we facilitate internationalisation and are its marketers”, explains Lars Bauer.
The precise Definition of the healthcare industry, namely the commercialisation of goods and services that serve to maintain and restore health, was adopted at the 1st National Healthcare Industry Conference in Rostock in 2005. It has since been recognised and adopted by the Federal Ministry of Economics. The network is involved in creating and marketing goods and services for preserving and restoring health. In this sense, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania is a pioneer in its perception of the healthcare sector as a key industry throughout Germany, and in a number of ways. For instance, in 2015 BioCon Valley® GmbH arranged to have what is known as an economic footprint of the healthcare sector drawn up for Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania to show the economic significance of the industry, for the first time for a German state. This year, an ‘economic footprint’ has been drawn up for the Baltic region including, among others, data about the healthcare sector in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Poland, as well as Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein. “Figures like this are important because they show which point we’ve reached and where we’re already good, but also where challenges still exist and where a lot still needs to be done”, explains Lars Bauer.
The data for Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania confirm the resilience of the healthcare sector here in the state, where it has seen continuous growth for more than a decade and is no longer a ‘flash in the pan’. “The industry now generates every seventh Euro in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania”, says Bauer. This is also reflected in the employment figures: every fifth employee works in the healthcare sector. At the same time, the industry is highly heterogeneous. The five main areas are life science, healthcare services, healthy ageing, health tourism and food for health. The healthcare industry in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania is dominated primarily by small and medium-sized companies, accounting for more than 90 percent. “We also raise their concerns in the Minister President’s healthcare advisory board, which implements the healthcare sector master plan MV 2030, among others.”
Other tasks performed by BioCon Valley® GmbH include organising meetings for networking activities such as visits to companies in the sector, as well as networking within the sector and with political representatives. The focus here is on the sector’s specific concerns, as well as taking up corresponding impetus, for example in creating a network of medical testing laboratories in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. “Starting on the basis of a request from the sector, this now pools comprehensive expertise about methods of testing medical products and facilitates networking and marketing throughout the state for Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania as a testing location”, explains Lars Bauer. The consensus-based network also pursues the main aim of strengthening this important market, thus ensuring that the associated value creation remains in the state.
“Making our local companies visible is one of our main objectives.” In producing new short films about healthcare companies in the state, BioCon Valley® GmbH has opted for an unusual, entertaining approach with a light-hearted big-screen presentation. The clips are part of the moving picture campaign ‘THE healthcare state Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania’, a slogan devised in the healthcare sector master plan MV 2030. It defines Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania as THE intergenerational healthcare state that gives outstanding significance to health in all phases of life. “We see the master plan as a living document that enables us to create the strategic basis for the sector’s development in the years ahead”, says Lars Bauer. He has worked for the state company since 2013 and became the sole managing director in 2018.
One of his milestones is the increasing internationalisation of the sector, particularly by attending leading international fairs. “You have to try things out to know if they’re going to work – sometimes you just have to do it“, says Lars Bauer. This is why since 2015, BioCon Valley® GmbH has also joined forces with Rostock Business to attend the MEDICA, the healthcare sector’s leading trade fair in Düsseldorf, where the industry is presented to an international audience. In 2024, a so-called ‘joint state stand’ was organised at the DMEA, Europe’s largest digital health trade fair. It takes about two years to prepare this kind of joint presentation, working together with the state. Furthermore, the sector is present at the “Arab Health” in Dubai, the world’s second largest health trade fair, opening up the possibility for cultivating markets in a completely different cultural context. “These are all specific services that we offer our companies and that they can use. What comes of it is up to them. We open the doors to the market, we gladly get everything ready, and it goes without saying that we’ll do any necessary following up as well. But actually stepping through the door, that’s something that the companies themselves have to do”, says Lars Bauer.
“To implement all these activities, we need colleagues who enjoy innovative challenges.” That definitely applies to the 15 team members based at headquarters in Rostock and a second site in Greifswald. However, the network operates not just on behalf of local companies: if the need arises, it also provides support when external companies want to settle in the state, working together with the state’s business development agency, the Invest in MV. One current example is the Irish company Amnexis, that develops solutions for simplifying documentation procedures in nursing, medicine and treatment. Contact to the company was established during a preparatory business trip in the run-up to the National Healthcare Conference MV 2023, where Ireland was the partner country. Amnexis then opened an office in Greifswald just twelve months later. “Many partners were involved here, including the Chambers of Commerce and industry (CCI) in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. This is also how we understand cooperation with and for the state. The way we work together as partners is also reflected in the healthcare sector committee of Schwerin CCI”, emphasises Lars Bauer.
It is the diversity of the players, the heterogeneous nature of the sector and the wide range of challenges that make it so exciting for BioCon Valley® managing director Lars Bauer. “First thing in the morning, it’s often not clear what the day will bring”, he says. “It’s just great fun to work on this future topic alongside so many passionate people in the state government and the political sector, business and science, to advance the development of the industry for Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.”
BioCon Valley® GmbH
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