Trade Talk Today Medica & Compamed Day 2

00:00:00:

00:00:03: Welcome to Trade Talk Today, your daily insight.

00:00:09: This show is brought to you by Gail and Matt.

00:00:21: Hello everyone and welcome to Trade Talk Today at Medica and CompaMed.

00:00:28: The halls are buzzing.

00:00:30: People from all over the world are here talking about the newest innovations, about solutions for the challenges that the industry is facing and so much more and we... or talking to wonderful guests here on the show.

00:00:41: And with that, I'd like to welcome our first guest on the show.

00:00:43: I hope you're doing very well today.

00:00:44: Thomas Willems, CEO of GalMed Group Limited Taipei Branch.

00:00:48: It is great to have you here.

00:00:49: And first of all, I hope you're doing well.

00:00:52: Wonderful.

00:00:52: Thanks, Emily.

00:00:53: Very good.

00:00:54: As we always do, we start off the show with some quick fire questions just to get to know you a little bit better and also to, I don't know, set the mood for some entertaining things that are going to happen later on.

00:01:05: So let's start with the first one.

00:01:07: MRI or CT scan?

00:01:10: Oh, I hate both.

00:01:11: Okay, good.

00:01:12: That's

00:01:13: a fair answer.

00:01:13: MRI maybe.

00:01:14: Okay.

00:01:15: Morning person or night owl?

00:01:17: Definitely night owl.

00:01:19: In-person meeting or virtual conference?

00:01:23: In-person for sure.

00:01:25: Pizza or burger?

00:01:26: Or none of the above?

00:01:27: None of the above.

00:01:28: Sorry.

00:01:28: What would you choose then?

00:01:29: I'll say like a salad.

00:01:30: Something like that.

00:01:31: Really?

00:01:31: Okay.

00:01:33: Surgical device or a diagnostic device?

00:01:36: We don't do either.

00:01:37: I think diagnostics are interesting.

00:01:40: Netflix or cinema?

00:01:43: That's a tough one.

00:01:45: I started watching different Netflix shows from my wife, which is a very difficult thing, but we sometimes go to the movies together.

00:01:53: Okay.

00:01:53: And then you, everybody gets to pick a movie and then it works out sometimes for you.

00:01:58: Okay.

00:01:59: Yeah.

00:01:59: That's a difficult thing if you have different ideas.

00:02:01: Alright.

00:02:02: Wine or cocktail?

00:02:04: Wine or cocktail?

00:02:05: Wine.

00:02:05: Definitely.

00:02:06: Every night.

00:02:06: Innovation or optimization?

00:02:08: Innovation.

00:02:09: Desktop or laptop?

00:02:12: And last question that I know is really important for you.

00:02:15: Live concert or Spotify?

00:02:18: Oh, you know, Spotify first.

00:02:21: but live concert is the best.

00:02:23: Absolutely.

00:02:24: And I know I'm not even sure I'm allowed to say that, but you are also a musician and people should look you up and listen to your music because it's wonderful

00:02:30: music.

00:02:30: Yeah, that would be great.

00:02:31: I get no follows.

00:02:32: Exactly.

00:02:33: But it's not about music today.

00:02:35: It's about Gael Nedd and you as the CEO of the company here talking about why you're back.

00:02:39: because you were returning to Menaka Complement this year for the first time after a couple of years.

00:02:44: Why did you decide to come back and visit us again?

00:02:47: Yeah, that's a good question.

00:02:48: I mean, seven years.

00:02:48: We have not had a booth here for... seven years.

00:02:50: I've been here before I was here last year.

00:02:54: I mean, we are an OEM company, so we only have literally twenty five, thirty maximum big customers.

00:03:02: So we can serve them pretty much from Taiwan or China.

00:03:06: Don't have to actually go to Medica to meet them.

00:03:08: So Medica for us is probably more important as a space to test something new.

00:03:15: And in the last couple of years, there was basically more maintaining the existing business.

00:03:21: And then, you know, it's expensive to come here.

00:03:23: And I mean, last but not least, it's November.

00:03:26: It's Germany.

00:03:28: who organizes something in November in Germany?

00:03:31: actually miserable weather.

00:03:33: The weather has been actually pretty good in the last couple of weeks.

00:03:36: And you're in the halls anyway, so it doesn't really matter what the weather is like.

00:03:39: You can stay warm in the halls.

00:03:40: That's true.

00:03:42: This is the second day, so you might not be able to answer this question yet.

00:03:44: But how was it the first thing?

00:03:45: Are you already happy that you decided to come back?

00:03:48: Absolutely.

00:03:48: No, I think it's totally a shift in our company's focus.

00:03:52: We have to go out more.

00:03:54: We have to invest in innovation.

00:03:55: We have to also present innovation to customers.

00:03:58: And of course I do that with our key customers, the top-twenty, top-twenty-five, but I'm actually more interested in the broader feedback.

00:04:06: So this year we have some new innovation that we bring here and we had a great day yesterday.

00:04:10: A lot of companies coming to our booth and want to know more about it.

00:04:15: Speaking about innovations, the BU event circuit is getting a lot of attention.

00:04:19: Is that what you brought with you?

00:04:21: Or what exactly is that?

00:04:22: Well,

00:04:22: it's actually a pen.

00:04:24: Yeah.

00:04:24: It's a pen in the shape of a sugarcane.

00:04:26: Exactly.

00:04:26: And that's really important.

00:04:27: This is

00:04:27: where the story starts.

00:04:28: Yeah.

00:04:28: So I'll give this to you as a gift.

00:04:30: Oh, thank

00:04:30: you very much.

00:04:31: So sugarcane.

00:04:32: It's all about sugarcane.

00:04:34: The problem with our industry, and we're in the consumable space.

00:04:37: So we're doing circuits, and masks, and connections, and filters, and all these things all made of plastic.

00:04:43: It's a lot of plastic.

00:04:44: And at the end of the life cycle, it's all getting incinerated because of safety reasons.

00:04:49: You cannot reuse a circuit.

00:04:51: I mean, it's possible, but it's not really nice and it's not safe.

00:04:56: So it all gets incinerated.

00:04:57: So the problem of the plastic waste is that It's all made in the normal way with fossil fuel, with oil.

00:05:06: And this is basically CO₂ that was stored in the ground for hundreds and millions of years and suddenly gets put into the atmosphere through the incineration.

00:05:14: We can't change the fact that we have to burn these circuits.

00:05:18: What we can change is where does the CO₂ come from?

00:05:22: So we take the CO₂ from sugarcane.

00:05:24: Sugarcane is a plant, it absorbs CO₂.

00:05:27: It takes CO₂ out of the atmosphere.

00:05:29: Then we basically make ethanol out of the sugarcane that is then basically processed into PE and EVA, which are the various components of plastic.

00:05:39: And so it's actually plastic, it's just from a different source.

00:05:41: And then at the end of the life cycle, we have a breathing circuit that gets incinerated, but it's the same CO-II that gets into the atmosphere that we previously took from the atmosphere.

00:05:50: So it's kind of a circular thing.

00:05:52: And this is the only way to break the spell.

00:05:54: And basically, if you compare the impacts to a normal plastic circuit, we always use the example of so we can save a kilo of CO₂ for every breathing circuit.

00:06:06: Big hospital uses about twenty thousand circuits a year, so it's like twenty tons.

00:06:11: Twenty tons of CO₂ is basically what a small forest absorbs every year.

00:06:16: So either you plant like four hundred trees or you switch to biocircuit.

00:06:21: I love it.

00:06:22: It's wonderful, especially in our world that we have to find sustainable solutions.

00:06:27: Tell me about the moment where someone introduced this to you, and I don't know if you as a CEO had to decide if you're going to do it or not, or how did that come about that you decided to go this way and go down this road?

00:06:39: Good question.

00:06:39: I mean, I joined a company about one and a half years ago, coming actually from different space, from life science, pharmaceuticals.

00:06:49: one thing that I did in the first one or two weeks, I said, what's our pipeline?

00:06:52: Because in Pharma, it's all about the pipeline.

00:06:55: And so this thing came up and said, we've been thinking about this, but it's kind of stuck and we don't really know whether.

00:07:01: when I said, this is probably the best idea we have.

00:07:04: In this industry, I mean, where we manufacture essentially generic products, I mean, they're not very differentiated.

00:07:12: They're good in quality.

00:07:13: the regulatory threshold is high, but essentially they're replaceable.

00:07:17: You have to find some areas where you are special.

00:07:21: And I call this kind of like a, you have to be a category leader in something.

00:07:26: And we think sustainable circuits, that's the category we could be leading in, right?

00:07:31: And it's just so happens that the Gale-Med logo is green, so perfect.

00:07:35: So no, I think it's such a... obvious choice really, and I'm just surprised nobody else came to it before, right?

00:07:42: Because bioplastic has been on the way, on the work for a while.

00:07:44: We're just the first to apply it in Metac.

00:07:48: Do voices come up that say you're protecting the planet more than you're thinking about protecting the patient?

00:07:55: No, I think that's kind of, that statement doesn't make a lot of sense because the circuit we are in the end selling is exactly the same as what we've been selling before.

00:08:06: This is an industry with a very, very strict regulatory framework, and we have to go through all the validation processes.

00:08:12: So this is actually not a new product.

00:08:14: It is a change of raw material.

00:08:16: So it's actually a variation only.

00:08:18: And essentially, it's the same product.

00:08:20: So yes, of course, it has to be first and foremost safe.

00:08:22: I mean, we are actually using this in very sick people.

00:08:25: And there cannot be even a trace or a hint of doubt.

00:08:29: But I'm very confident in that.

00:08:30: And we're passing through all the biocompatibility studies and everything as we speak.

00:08:34: And then it really, what remains is as good as everything else, but with the added benefit.

00:08:40: of reducing future.

00:08:41: So what are the reactions been from the industry?

00:08:43: Have you had other companies come to you and say, how are you doing this?

00:08:46: Can we copy it?

00:08:47: Can we do this?

00:08:48: And are you happy if other companies start copying this idea?

00:08:51: Well, I mean, in this industry, when you are being copied, it shows that you're doing something interesting.

00:09:00: We do have, of course, we have some patents on the process.

00:09:04: And enforcing them is going to be not easy, I guess, but.

00:09:08: I mean, you just have to be first here.

00:09:11: And eventually there will be others that are following.

00:09:13: I think the next two or three years are really critical.

00:09:15: We will see how certain authorities, especially in Northern Europe, the tenders will shift more and more to sustainable.

00:09:22: And I also think that ultimately this will be a product that one of our big customers will buy.

00:09:28: So we will actually manufacture their circuits in a bioplastic material.

00:09:32: All of this will take a few years.

00:09:33: And eventually, if people start to copy us, it's actually a proof of concept.

00:09:40: Absolutely.

00:09:41: You've been driving the industry for a long time and you speak different languages and you are part of the global transformation and bringing everybody together.

00:09:50: How do you manage to do that as a person, as a CEO?

00:09:55: Okay, very wide question.

00:10:00: No, I mean, so I do speak different languages because I've been living in Asia for twenty five, thirty years.

00:10:04: I speak Chinese, I speak English, of course, in German.

00:10:08: Look, I don't think there's a secret recipe for, you know, being a leader in a cultural, different environment.

00:10:15: I mean, you yourself live in a different cultural environment.

00:10:17: So you know what I'm talking about.

00:10:20: I think you have to be open-minded.

00:10:21: and curious and you know a bit of humility doesn't hurt but it really it's about curiosity and to some extent just being open for different people different languages different styles and I'm very very comfortable now living in Asia.

00:10:36: in fact if I in Taiwan where we live was at home if I go to a restaurant and there's a lot of foreigners there then I would say what are all these foreigners doing?

00:10:44: Oh really?

00:10:45: I don't see myself as a foreigner anymore.

00:10:48: It's good if you see a lot of foreigners here at the Medica, because you want to see a lot of people from different countries.

00:10:52: It's wonderful to have you here on the show.

00:10:54: I'm going to follow Gael Med on LinkedIn, and I'm going to follow you on Spotify, and that's the way we get the whole full circuit.

00:10:59: So it's great to have you here on the show.

00:11:00: Have a great time here in DeSotova, and I hope the weather stays OK for you.

00:11:04: Thanks, Ami.

00:11:04: It's November.

00:11:06: OK.

00:11:06: Thanks a lot.

00:11:09: And as you know, Gael Med is in Taiwan, and we're going to stick.

00:11:14: in the region of Asia.

00:11:15: It is a very, very important market for the industry.

00:11:19: That is why under the umbrella of Medicare, Asia's seven healthcare trade fairs are unified.

00:11:25: And this opens up promising new markets for the healthcare industry, which is really important right now because the industry needs access to innovation and also access to the right networks.

00:11:37: Medicare Asia plays a vital role of being a catalyst for connection and collaboration across Asia's healthcare ecosystem and the long-term vision is to establish Medicare Asia as the definitive gateway for Asia's healthcare industry.

00:11:54: We have a lot of guests from Asia here at the trade fair and let's take a look at what they're doing and what they're presenting here at the fair.

00:13:08: As you can see, the halls are buzzing and we of course not only have guests from Asia, we have guests from all over the world.

00:13:14: and there is so much to see on the grounds of the trade fair.

00:13:18: Tomorrow we have a lot happening, of course, here at the fair.

00:13:21: We have the KUKA Innovation Award, in Hall Ten.

00:13:25: We have the Medica Startup Park in Hall Twelve and Hospital of the Future in Hall Ten.

00:13:30: Make sure you don't miss them.

00:13:32: If you don't remember all the stuff I just say, check out our website and make sure you check out our show.

00:13:38: Tomorrow we have great guests on the show.

00:13:40: Christian Stamme, organizer of the wearable technologies show.

00:13:44: He is a great guest and he has a lot to talk about.

00:13:46: I'm so excited.

00:13:48: And we have Michael Gavakin, business development development manager of Norton.

00:13:52: And I'm really happy to have him on the show as well.

00:13:55: Until then, stay healthy, take care, and I hope you stay well.

00:14:00: This show was brought to you by Gail Met.