Health

Overview

In this report, and as per the European Commission's Annual Single Market Report 2021, the scope of a health ecosystem (sometimes described also as healthcare or healthcare system) includes the manufacturing of pharmaceuticals and their key inputs, medical devices and equipment and personal protective equipment, healthcare services (medical and residential care), health technologies and related services. For the purposes of this report, the health industrial ecosystem includes primarily patients and healthcare professionals together with all the different products and services involved in the inpatient or outpatient medical care, making it a very complex and broad system of various stakeholders along the value chain that are all dynamically interconnected via horizontal and vertical links among them, as well as framework conditions that support its functioning

The health industrial ecosystem represents one of the biggest and fastest growing industries globally and it plays a fundamental role for both society and the economy. According to Eurostat National Accounts, it is consuming over 10% of GDP on average in EU27 and the gross value added of the ecosystem in 2019 was around €1.2 bn, accounting for 9.5% of the total EU value added. The ecosystem employed 24.8 million people in 2018 directly and a continuous rise of employment is expected over next decade. main origins of innovation in the health ecosystem. The ecosystem is dominated by small and medium sized companies (SMEs), amounting to around 493 000 firms representing over 99.7% of all enterprises in the ecosystem. However, the upscaling of SMEs in the EU27 is seriously hindered due to unused synergies between large companies and SMEs.

The European Monitor of Industrial Ecosystems (EMI) project has produced its first yearly report on the Health ecosystem, highlighting data on its progress in terms of its green and digital transition across several dimensions, including industrial performance, environmental impact, technology generation and uptake, start-up trends, investments and funding, and skills.

The data collected and used for this report is also shared in the data package below, relating to the abovementioned dimensions. Wherever possible, the data package allows for time series analyses, as well as comparisons among industrial ecosystems, Member States, and between the EU and other major economies such as the US and China.

Overview

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