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Press Selection
viewpoint 03/2003 Carl Zeiss Meditec
Workshop on the standards
of the American Health Authorities
Lufthansa Magazin 5/2003
www.kompetenznetze.de - Feature - Jena region
The Home of Innovation
AHK - MGCC Quarterly September/October 2001
The Business Magazine of the Malaysian-German Chamber of Commerce and Industry
New methods for excellent eyesight
Medical Technology for Ophthalmology
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Lufthansa Magazin 5/2003
www.kompetenznetze.de - Feature - Jena region
The Home of Innovation
With Networks of Competence, Jena aims to become the top innovative region.
The world´s largest researches and business enterprises are drawn by the scientific excellence and
pioneering spirit in the university city. Startups are booming and inventions causing worldwide sensations.
It is exactly 137 years since industry and research, in the persons of astute entrepreneur Carl Zeiss and
ingenious scientist Ernst Abbe, entered into a fruitful symbiosis in the city of Jena, Thuringia.
Abbe developed a theory for the precise calculation of optical lenses and corresponding production techniques.
From then on, Zeiss, who soon also made Abbe his business partner, was able to produce lenses for binoculars,
microscopes, photographic lenses and measuring instruments. The city on the Saale rose to the status of
acknowledged world center of the optical industry, a status it holds to this day.
Entirely in the spirit of Zeiss and Abbe, und continuing the optical and precision engineering tradition,
scientists and entrepreneurs from the region are again planning to join forces and conquer the world - this
time with trendsetting equipment and techniques for use in the medical field, biotechnology, image processing
and optoelectronics. Ophthalmology is one specialist focus in the Network of Competence OphthalmoInnovation.
Detailed panorama image of eye fundus © Carl Zeiss Meditec AG
A group of researchers under Dietrich Schweitzer of the University Eye Hospital and clinic of Jena´s Friedrich
Schiller University is making great progress with a most spectacular project. The scientists are developing
an imaging technique for the early detection of age-related degeneration of the macula,
the area of the retina where eyesight is keenest. For hitherto unknown reason, the light receptors situated
there die off in many people when they grow old - they become blind. This disease affects alone two million Germans.
Other research projects have already resulted in successful products and company startups.
Imedos GmbH in Weimar, for instance, came out of the Jena eye hospital. The company has developed a device
that analyzes the behavior of blood vessels in the retina, for example when intraocular pressure alters or
following medication. The results provide important pointers for the treatment of green cataracts.
Ilmenau-based Eldith gmbH, which was formed in 2000, has also utilized the results of a research project to develop a
much-demanded product. The device cuts to less than 10 minutes a visual-field examination that used to take up
to 40 minutes.
Established companies also benefit from the many ideas emanating from the authoritites focused in OphthalmoInnovation,
such as the University Eye Hospital and Clinic of the friedrich Schiller University, the Fraunhofer
Institute for applied Optics and Precision Engineering (IOF) and also the Institute of Biomedical Engineering
and Informatics of the Technical University of Ilmenau.
Carl Zeiss Meditec AG is one such company. It employs some 380 people, last year reported sales to the tune of
120 million euros and has often benefited from the expertise of these renowned institutions.
The results: a laser that can even correct extreme sight deficiencies in seconds by removing the corneal layer,
and a scalpel whose tip produces microscopically small plasma that enable the surgeon to cut out diseased
tissue at the back of the eye.
"The contacts initiated and cultivated through the Network of Competence permit highly
efficacious collaboration," says Meditec boss Ulrich Kraus. OphthalmoInnovation coordinator Volker
Wiechmann sees the unbroken chain of competence from basic research to clinical testing as an all-important
advantage. "Development and licensing procedures are so very expensive that no enterprise or
institute could afford to finance them alone."
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