Health Economy in Baden-Württemberg: Its Strengths and Foreign Economic Potentials

The health economy is a sector with potential to become a leading sector of the German economy. But regarding to the economic relevance of the health sector its level of internationalization is relatively low. Only two to three percent of worldwide patients are medicated in Germany and the German share of sales of the global investments to health measures simply seven to eight percent. The key benefits that accrued from internationalization are the following:

• Global networking could facilitate the distribution of new technologies.
• Staff could be educated wherever the newest findings are evolved.
• The competitiveness of individual actors as well as of the health industry as a whole would be augmented.

Various options exist to internationalize the German health economy. Starting with therapies of foreign patients in German hospitals and trade of medical products it’s possible to extend the international strategy to global cooperation between clinics in medical research. Terminal German actors could systematically offer health accomplishments abroad.

Because the available official statistics are not sufficient this project locates foreign economic activities and strategies in the health economy of Baden-Württemberg. Further it analyses the need for political support in the most important sectors of the health industry by representative, standardized interviews. Complementary specialists of the health economy are interrogated qualitatively.