MAGIA2Market follows on from the first phase of the MAGIA project which ended on December 31, 2019. The second phase, MAGIA2MArket, once again brings together the four main European MedTech clusters: bioPmed (coordinator, Piedmont), BioWin (Wallonia), Life Science Nord (Northern Germany) and Lyonbiopole (Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes) who are joining forces to pursue the European strategic partnership on medtech.
The medtech sector is very innovative and constantly evolving. Despite the current COVID-19 crisis, the development of strategic technological, industrial and commercial partnerships, as well as access to networks of investors and experts at the international level, remain essential for medtech players. This allows them to be at the forefront of innovation and generate maximum benefits for patients in Europe and around the world. However, it is a very competitive sector for SMEs, and it is difficult to create entry points in leading countries.
During the first phase, the MAGIA alliance established a comprehensive market knowledge base and in-depth understanding of two global MedTech markets: the United States and China. The partners have established a strong network of key counterparts such as Medical Alley in the United States, with Tsinghua University, the ICI Co-Incubation Network and the China Association for the Medical Device Industry (CAMDI) in China.
In the first phase, the SMEs that participated in the project received excellent preparation regarding opportunities and market requirements. They had the opportunity to get in touch with MAGIA partners in the target countries and were able to exchange their experiences with SMEs sharing the same concerns.
As a logical continuation, MAGIA2Market, the implementation phase, will offer SMEs the opportunity to meet potential partners, thus laying the foundations for potential cooperation, both in terms of commercial agreements and co-development or research collaboration. The four project partners will also explore a third target market: Japan. The aim is to establish strategic partnerships with organizations from the Japanese MedTech innovation ecosystem.
Thus, over the next two years, the overall objective of the MAGIA alliance is to pursue its main goal: building and strengthening strong networks in three target countries, the United States, China and Japan, in order to provide efficient and sustainable gateways to SMEs so that they can successfully penetrate these target markets.