Juliette Gagliardi
Junior Researcher
Medical technology industry in Italy - Statistics & Facts
The term “Medical technologies” includes two kinds of product categories, medical devices and in vitro diagnostics, both characterized by a high degree of innovation. Enhanced quality, efficiency, and sustainability of healthcare systems are all positive effects of implementing the use of medical technologies. With more than 4.5 thousand companies operating in the medical technology field as of 2022, Italy is the fourth biggest medical devices market in Europe, after Germany, France, and the UK. In 2020 the number of employees working in the medical technology sector in Italy amounted to more than 112 thousand, almost twice the number in 2018. Applications for medical device patents submitted to the European patent office by Italy has continuously grown since 2012, reaching 343 applications in 2023. Among those, the number of medical technology patents granted amounted to 196.
MedTech expenditure and investments
Public expenditure on medical technologies in Italy has grown constantly since 2015, reaching 7.6 billion euros in 2022. According to the data, Lombardy was the Italian region with the highest expenditure in this sector, with over one million euros, followed by Veneto and Piedmont. Medical devices was the category in which the level of expenditure was the highest, with almost 5.1 billion euros. In 2022, investments in research and development in the medical devices industry in Italy amounted to 0.7 billion euros, a much lower value compared to pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.In vitro diagnostics
In vitro diagnostic (IVD) tests are a sub-group of medical technologies used to diagnose, monitor, and detect diseases and individual predispositions to diseases. The Italian IVD market amounted to roughly 2.1 billion euros in 2021. The company with the highest market share in the Italian IVD market was Roche Diagnostic, followed by Abbott Laboratories and Danaher, as of 2023.
