Important milestones of medical engineering were set in Jena. For example, in the beginning of the 20th century the Jena company Carl Zeiss developed in cooperation with the Swedish ophthalmologist Allvar Gullstrand an ophthalmoscope to examine the eyeground. Up to the present day, its main optical concept is still applied to modern examination instruments of ophthalmology.

Jena is an internationally established location for medical engineering. The local technology leaders include companies such as Carl Zeiss MediTec, Carl Zeiss MicroImaging, Analytik Jena, Jenoptik and as well a large number of medium-sized companies.

Jena is home to ‘medways’, a network of leading German research institutes, industrial enterprises and universities. They are dedicated to creating new processes for diagnostics and therapy in ophthalmology and to developing globally marketable products of medical engineering. ‘Medways’ initiated and organized the „German Conference on the Future of the Medical Engineering Industry” („Zukunftskonferenz Medizintechnik”) in June 2009, which resulted in the „Jena Declaration on Medical Engineering”.

Jena’s companies of the medical technology industry generate a worldwide turnover of 700 to 800 million euros each year – and counting. The local universities educate qualified junior personnel, who are taught for example at the Institute of Applied Optics and the Institute of Applied Physics of the Friedrich Schiller University Jena and as well at the Departments of Medical Engineering and Biology and SciTec of the University of Applied Sciences Jena.

The Beutenberg Campus hosts a large number of competencies in Jena under the principle „Life Science meet Physics“. It is home to BioCentiv, the Institute of Virology and Antiviral Therapy of the University Medical Centre, the Centre of Molecular Biomedicine of the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, the Leibniz Institute for Age Research (Fritz Lipman Institute), the Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology (Hans Knöll Institute), the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry and the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering, the Institute of Photonic Technology and the Technology and Innovation Park Jena. The University Medical Centre is also an important project partner when it comes to innovative product development.

Here you will find the medical engineering brochure as a download