personnel, and produce goods or services which are more innovative and with a shorter
life cycle than the average industry. One of the industries that apply to these criteria in
the US and Europe is the medical equipment industry. This industry develops and
manufactures the instruments and equipments used by physicians and nurses in
hospitals, clinics and primary care centers. Besides being a key technological element in
the Health Care system, the medical equipment industry also exhibits high growth rates
because the population of industrialized countries is rapidly ageing and demanding
better health care. Medical equipment companies are also attracted towards medical
complexes than can function as a growth pole for some urban economies (Van den Berg
and Van Klink 1996).
The largest medical equipment industry is in the United States. In the European Union
there are about some 5,000 manufacturers, employing some 240,000 persons; Germany
is the largest european market and concentrates 40% of the production and 54% of the
value added. Other important European manufacturers are located in France, United
Kingdom and Sweden. The medical equipment industry shows a high degree of spatial
concentration. For example, agglomerations of medical equipment companies are found
in the southeast of England, the surroundings of Paris, or near the scientific universities
of Lund in Sweden.
In spite of the importance of the medical equipment industry, there are almost no
studies that analyze the factors determining the spatial concentration of innovative
activities within this industry. This paper wants to contribute to the research area of
regional development and technological change, and studies the degree of spatial
concentration of economic and innovative activities in the Spanish medical equipment
industry. The paper is structured in the following way. The second section shows the
spatial distribution of economic and innovative activities using patents granted in the
1979□1995 period as an indicator. The third section offers an approach to the factors
determining the spatial distribution of medical equipment’s innovative activities, and
discusses the results from an empirical study. Finally, some conclusions are included.
2. Distribution and degree of spatial concentration of economic and innovative
activities in the Spanish medical equipment industry