Opportunity for Serbian doctors - U.S. Medtronic opens branch office in Belgrade

The first life-changing therapy - a portable pacemaker that runs on batteries, was the foundation for the number of later therapies of the company Medtronic, whose products are used every four seconds somewhere in the world to save or improve someone's life.

The US company Medtronic is the global leader in the field of medical technology. It has invented about 15,000 different products for treating over 50 different chronic diseases and currently holds more than 21,000 patents.

This company has been operating in Serbia for more than 35 years through a distributor (the company Bimed). Recently, a branch office of that company has been officially opened in Belgrade. That is Medtronic's second office in the countries of former Yugoslavia, since it opened the first one in Zagreb in 1996.

- The most important role of Medtronic in Serbia is to help domestic medical specialists increase the number of people having access to the therapy through education and training - Slobodan Radumilo, the vice president of Medtronic for central and east Europe, says to eKapija.

- Raising the level of knowledge of domestic specialists and then transferring the knowledge from Serbia to other countries is the second guideline of the development we plan to carry out. Serbia is a country in which we see the future and where we believe to be able to develop a headquarters that will help us educate the population of other countries in the region as well. In that way, the opening of our office in Serbia represents the beginning of development not only for Serbia, but also for a broader region in the future.

As he pointed out, the new branch office in Belgrade will facilitate technical support to the users of Medtronic products, create an opportunity for the development of a regional educational center, engage domestic specialists in the education process and involve them in further research.

Medtronic creates an innovative medical technology, with the aim of alleviating the pain, helping the recovery and extending the life of millions of patients worldwide. Therapies and products of this company are used in the treatment of over 30 chronic diseases as well as in surgical technologies. The company invests ten percent of its revenue in researches and development and, as Radumilo says to our web portal, Medtronic will invest about USD 1.5 billion this year.

Belgrade-based Bimed has been an exclusive representative of Medtronic in Serbia over the past few years, and Radumilo stresses that it will continue to represent that US company in the future.

Medtronic was founded in 1949 and has been growing ever since to become an international company that uses its technologies to transform the way in which exhausting, chronic diseases are treated. It operates in 120 countries around the world and employs over 40,000 people, 4,500 engineers and about 400 physicians and doctors of science. The company's world headquarters is in Minnesota, USA, while its regional headquarters are situated in Japan and Switzerland.