Biography

Kest Huijsman (1955)
After my study Biology (Utrecht, 1981), I worked a few years at the LUMC in Leiden at the Pathology lab. In 1983 I changed to the in vitro diagnostics business world and started as Sales Rep at Abbott. After four years I switched to a product manager position at Pharmacia. Five years later I changed over to Johnson&Johnson where I was responsible for the overall Benelux diagnostics business at Ortho Diagnostics Division in Beerse (Belgium).

Since 1986 I work in the medical devices industry. The first two years as managing director of TD Medical in Eindhoven and from 1998 onwards as managing director for B. Braun Medical in Oss.

Furthermore I am board member for Nefemed, the Dutch branche organization for medical devices and also chairman of the foundation MedTechPartners, a collaboration platform between (academic) medical centers, research institutes, universities of technology and (inter)national enterprises in medical technology.

In the free moments I follow as former national player the rugby games, am a hockey player and a national hockey referee, like to cook, play piano and I am also married and have two children.

Abstract presentation

The role of individual companies, branch organizations, platforms and governments in innovation.

Health care is facing within the next decades an enormous challenge. The (health) care demand of the elderly population is growing tremendously and the manpower to support this is not available. Some reports say that in 2025 we need approximately 20% of the people working in the health care, which of course is impossible. Use of medical devices is one of the solutions. We therefore need ongoing innovation, probably different techniques or still unknown new inventions to answer that future demand.  Innovation in medical devices in most cases is going in small steps, often not noticed, but certainly not fast enough. Companies like B. Braun invest large amounts of money in R&D. Partly in improving current techniques, partly in new techniques and partly in very basic research. There is a gap between the current and needed speed of bringing new techniques and inventions ready to market. Only by joining forces in the industry we can answer that issue.