The ecosystem of
Medical Valley

The Medical Valley European Metropolitan Region Nuremberg (EMN) Association is an internationally leading innovation ecosystem in the area of healthcare management.

Highly specialized research institutions, internationally leading and at the same time many growing companies are active here. They cooperate closely with world-renowned health research institutions in order to jointly find solutions for the challenges of healthcare today and tomorrow.

This extraordinary concentration of players, combined with the international market and competitive position of individual players, the unique infrastructures and services, all provide the conditions that allow ideas to be turned into products, processes and services more quickly.

The nationally and internationally outstanding position of this economically strong region was additionally strengthened in January 2010 by the appointment of “Leading-Edge Cluster” for medical technology by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).

In April 2017, Medical Valley, in cooperation with the Zollhof Tech Incubator and the Health Hackers, was named one of twelve national “Digital Hubs” by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK) – the only one that focuses exclusively on health.

We, as Medical Valley European Metropolitan Region Nuremberg (EMN) Association, have currently more than 250 members from business, science, healthcare, networks and politics. We have been contributing to the further development, coordination and marketing of this ecosystem since 2007.

Current activities of Medical Valley EMN are a. o. operation of the innovation centers Medical Valley Center Erlangen and Forchheim, coordination of the Bavarian Medical Technology Cluster (in cooperation with Forum MedTech Pharma), set-up and performance of the Medical Valley Award (Award for research teams at the pre-seed stage) and the coordination of the topic platform “Digital Health/Medicine“ in line with the Center for Digitization.Bavaria.

Furthermore, Medical Valley EMN is an EIT Health consortium member. EIT Health is a consolidation of European partners, that develop – within the scope of Horizon 2020 – new solutions regarding the topics „Promote Healthy Living“, „Support Active Ageing“ and „Improve Healthcare“. With a budget of up to 80 m p.a. for the next 7 to 15 years EIT Health is currently one of the biggest health research programs worldwide.

The Medical Valley GmbH is the commercial platform of the cluster and offers professional support for all business matters regarding  healthcare market access consulting, trading consulting as well as acquisition of capital.

In 2019 the dmac – Digital Health Application Center was founded in Bamberg. dmac is another essential hub in the Medical Valley ecosystem and offers support and expertise for companies on their way to digital healthcare of today and tomorrow.

In 2021, with the founding of the Institute for Healthcare Robotics and Automation, short IFOHRA, another component of the Medical Valley Center Bamberg followed. IFOHRA accompanies hospitals and other healthcare providers in the technological transformation process, especially in the implementation of automation and robotics solutions. IFOHRA also supports manufacturers of innovative automation solutions in gaining access to the German healthcare market.

Since September 2022, the Medical Valley Academy has bundled the expertise from the network and offers online and e-learning courses for first-class knowledge transfer on all aspects of healthcare.