 Please fasten your mental seat belt because I want to take you on a very fast track and a bumpy road through more than 20 years of European research project experience Hopefully to take off at the end towards 2020 and beyond in 1992 when Materialize was just created two years before We took on the quite daunting task to Start as coordinator of the first research project We were ever involved in and we started coordinating a project with companies like Siemens Zeneca Universities like the cow you live in at that time. We were only 10 people very young people and we had what I would call a mission the mission was the one of our company that we Formulated at the opening reception of our company that we wanted to contribute to a better and healthier world and That we believed we could use well the technologies we were developing to solve this to to help Creating better products and those technologies where heart and software Related to additive manufacturing of which you have heard already here before so the program Fidias was for us as a company a milestone because it allowed us to start doing Structure to research and to do it in collaboration with large companies and The name was chosen Because Fidias is the Greek sculpture who sculpted the Parthenon and it was well known to be the first in my aesthetic relations lessons at high school to Be able to really create beautiful human beings in in his sculpting And that's actually what we also wanted to do in the project because we wanted to reproduce pathological situations of people scanned with CT in three-dimensional prints and Well, when we started the project What you got out when you printed the voxels or the pixels of A 3d CT at that time was something they like here a lot in in Denmark a Lego like structure Which was not exactly what a surgeon really found helpful to analyze a situation So during the project we we developed a lot of technologies for instance Siemens Perfected spiral CT which allowed to take the scan of a patient in just a few seconds rather than slice by slice and And and made the algorithms to be able to really Calculate accurately how this spiral translated in correct 3d information materialized it further interpolations on this car you live and worked on that and That were a lot of of technical results But what was even nicer is that during this project we continuously did demonstrations to surgeons So we were quite proud at the end of the project in 1995 that we had supported already during the project from the project 70 surgeons on individual people with very complex surgical interventions and therefore instance our material development which resulted in the first Colorable 3d printed models which was done in collaboration with with Zeneca helped to give surgeons Instruments to make their surgery is better and the results demonstrate that nearly in one third of the cases We could actually Remove one of the surgical interventions from the normal healing trajectory We could in two-thirds of the cases reduce the surgery time drastically and in over 80% of the cases we improved the result of the surgery with Approximately 20% Results that could never have been obtained in quality without this technology. So you would say fantastic Yeah, everybody I think also the people from the Commission were proud during our final session About this kind of results and what happened? It was no real success if you look back. Yeah, it's not that in the following years We could as a small company start commercializing because there was no good ecosystem in fact, we needed to sell this kind of Technology to hospitals where the radiologists were unwilling to give medical images to a Company because medical images was something proprietary to a radiologist Yeah, even even a surgeon hardly could see them in some in some hospitals So this is why innovation didn't work. There was no Ecosystem so at materialize we thought well, let's do better and we created a new project We called it the Pisa project and in that Pisa project We just didn't create copies of the human anatomy, but we started creating surgical instruments At least that was something that was being sold Yeah Not in a lot of sectors, but for instance in the dental sector and that's why we concentrated first on the dental implantology oral implantology where People used already handmade guides that didn't have any information about the patient's anatomy from CT at the moment we started that project and we created there also multiple examples on Patients during the project and we had a technology ready to go to the market at the end of the project and Actually, we were successful with that technology Unfortunately only after we had acquired an American company that was already selling software in the field and that gave us market access so being successful with that in 2006 at once the orthopedic in industry which had laughed at the guide Development project in the 90s when it was really happening because they said oh for us. It's robot surgery It's no it's it's navigation systems that do the job came back and they got interested in Applications like for instance knee implant surgery so at that moment We started developing and in a few Years time we placed in the market systems to guide knee replacement surgery By using exactly the same technology that was developed in the 90s in the Pisa project and Where we got funded and and collaborated already with some of the players of this industry So these guides are today for instance for knees Used by approximately every knee implant company in the world Just five years later So what explains this? Access to the market at this moment Well, I will come to bled later But I first want to say That one of the key factors of success is the fact that we created there a product That is a win for the patient like all the products we created But in this case also a win for the surgeon Because he can reduce his surgery time and feel more confident about it More importantly, it's also a win for the industry Because they can drastically reduce the amount of instrumentation they have to manufacture for each implant being placed and This is reducing the cost for them Nevertheless, they are charging guided solutions harder. So they have a good income on this kind of technology at the moment and For the industry it's not the only case here But because for the industry I more and more count hospitals also among the industry Definitely in the United States So also for the hospitals it counts that they can make savings for instance because they have to sterilize less instruments and I'm finally through this entire process By the fact that less implants are going to be needed to be replaced by the fact that Through competition Prices are reducing of those systems the health care systems and the government will also benefit in fact This is how we built our Success story and today half of the activities of materialized are medical related We use this technology now at materialize on a monthly basis To make individual engineering of instruments for more than 5,000 patients per month Which is also a kind of changing ecosystem Because it means that today surgeons are accepted accepting that Engineers support them for each individual surgery Which was something which was unheard of when we started our first project in 1992 But on top of that materialize developed also a lot of Technical capacity we work a lot with the automotive industry in Europe. We were Taking the initiative of the direct spare project where Siemens has been talking about so we play also a technological role and actually The machines we use most in our facility are the ones We developed in that very first project from Phidias between 92 and 95 to print skulls faster So at this moment they still print skulls, but they mainly print car parts all spin-offs From this very first project as it was said earlier We have grown and we have grown every year of our existence to 850 people So we are definitely proud at materialize at the way in the way We have been growing and our people are very proud They can help so many patients around the world and it are even much more than those 5,000 we help ourselves directly because more than 400 medical device companies around the world use our technology To create their own devices Sometimes to compete with us in the guide field even but that's life and that's healthy but if I Look from the materialized perspective the two and a half million euro that was invested in the Phidias project For all consortium members together, you know of which Materialized got approximately one fourth and which we financed 50 percent ourselves Was a very important amount of money for us because it had this additional Possibility to bring us in contact with large companies and to do research at a different level On the other hand if I would be looking at this money from a European Commission perspective, I wouldn't be happy Because in the end If this technology is today spreading it's thanks to us companies because the entire orthopedic and dental sector is dominated by us companies and they decide in which European country they are going to use this technology the revenues that those companies generate on this technology are a Multiplicated of what materialized earns and a much higher multiplicator of what materialized pays in taxes and What is it maybe even worse? That is that 80 percent of the patients that are currently using these technologies are in the US Not that those people are not allowed to use it, but why are no European citizens? Using this technology, which clearly on all lines has a very good impact So While we may be happy with a little bit of funding that we get I think it's much more important that We use these programs to also in the meantime create ecosystems and To have a bigger impact on our politicians and on other aspects of society So when we go for the takeoff to what we want to do in 2020 I Would like to formulate a new project a new project that hopefully is as Influential as the fidious project was but at this time I would take lessons from the past into account I Would like to create again a project with a big added value and added value means that We translate something that is very good for humanity into economic success I Would like a project that just not cares about creating a technology but it also cares about creating a market and I think it needs to have it needs to be a market with strategic Importions, yeah, not just a New kind of candy So these are key factors and what is in the project that I would like to propose to you Well, it's a project for which we at materialize Got inspiration from the concern that we have that our products are not getting to a lot of people Yeah, while they are getting cheaper. They are still Not reaching a lot of people and we took already some initiatives for instance during the war in Iraq We exported our products to Iraq and we created the system to use medical models there in full wartime But Africa is another country where our technologies today not being used So we started as materialized Investing as a small company we need to focus we focused on a small stable Country called Benin which has four percent of the purchasing power parity of Belgium So people are really poor there, but luckily this country doesn't have large natural resources So it's a quite stable country and there is a limited amount of corruption not so much more than in Belgium or Germany so With this we took in a foundation that is working already 30 years in that country and that was founded by a surgeon from well not by a surgeon for Bell from Belgium It was founded because a young surgeon for Bell from Belgium and his fiancee Who we're doing development work there in the local hospital and their local schools When they were returning to Belgium, they died because they're playing crash in Africa So the families of those two young people decided we will continue their work and they have been doing so for 30 years already They are administrating two hospitals for elementary schools materialized has committed and has is already working to support secondary school with two thousand pupils and We are at the same time Helping in the hospitals with our kind of technologies and with the relations We have in the world for instance with the American organization sign who delivers free implant for fracture care Because there are a lot of people in Africa that have accidents and nasty accidents And why do they have those nasty accidents? Because they have no good mobility The range the roads are very dangerous like in a lot of developing countries Yeah, and that's where we can create a lot of added value in a market We are currently losing because the new truck you saw so on the previous slide was a Toyota truck Yeah, and the other cars you see driving around are those old French cars 404 504 Yeah In this kind of status Yeah, because a new car from Europe you can't drive in Africa. You don't find the petrol that is that is Letting it drive in a in a good way so Sorry, this this lack of transport is also an impediment to economic growth of this component continent It's a lack of impediment to create a new market because to a large extent, okay China is now a market, but we all feel that it's clearly dominated by Chinese if we want create a market that materialize that that European Union still can own it's for instance Africa and we are losing it at the moment so That's why I want to Create a project building European cars But cars that are really meant for Africa and not for European roads They must be adapted to the road conditions They shouldn't drive 200 kilometers an hour because they will not ever come on German highways They are Sufficient when they drive 90 kilometers an hour at maximum speed and it will be much safer and much more fuel efficient If they are standardly driving at 50 kilometers an hour They should not fall in the same trap as the road as the cars we see here on our European roads that they all carry one person and Then not drive but stand still We rather should have community transport Guided by private entrepreneurs that own those small buses But that means it's not only a project about building those cars. It's also a project about how to finance this Using Insurance for instance so that financing can happen It's a challenge not only to the normal industry we have mostly in this room But also to the banking industry to the insurance industry So this should work together with For instance support from politics and not necessarily in monetary terms rather in political terms To make sure that those European cars those European vans don't get taxed at the border Because that's the only way how American Sorry African countries can earn money because they have poor systems internally. They meet need to tax at the border Impeding development impeding their access to good products So if we build those again with European technology so that we can track Where they are driving and that we can build the drivers on a per mileage basis something We are trying to do here in Europe as well We can immediately deliver money to the government to make better roads That's the kind of ecosystem. I'm talking about an ecosystem Where also in a second generation maybe batteries can be placed in the cars because they have in general plenty of solar energy But it can't be the first generation of African cars. I Personally absolutely won't support this project if Not every car that is going to Africa is paid by an African entrepreneur It may be financed By a European bank, but it can't be given for free That's not the way we really support them it's only by developing local businesses in maintenance of those trucks in driving those trucks in fueling those trucks that we can generate a healthy future is This is a project for Africa. Yes, it is but it's as much a project for Europe Because first it creates a market for Europe for for economic growth second We will have to learn if we want to be competitive there to do cost down Innovation at which the Chinese for instance are beating it us at the moment Maybe we don't have to assemble the cars here. It can be cheaper done in Africa But when we may have to ship them like Ikea boxes To Africa so that we can concentrate on the high added value components that go into such a car It should we should do it also because it doesn't make sense that we are here creating Expensive technologies to reduce fuel emissions and so on and then export our old cars to Africa to ruin the land there Because we are living on a globe and the air is polluted everywhere and it's drifting to Europe Anyhow, you can see that easily when the Sahara sandstorms or dirt putting dirt on your car So There will be technological challenges to be solved for instance our technology of additive manufacturing could be used to create new types of Yeah Filter system air filter systems that are maintenance free that allow cars also to run in Africa And it can also be used to create second lives for a number of components For instance, why would we produce new wheels for those cars in Africa? We have plenty of wheels we are Simply throwing away at this moment in Europe and while recycling is of course already much better than throwing it away in a dump field It's even costing less energy when we simply reuse all those wheels of which a majority is still very well usable When we dispose of our old car So I want to bring this together now and What I want to say is that we need to build this ecosystem and the competitive advantage that Europe will have is that it controls the ecosystem just like Apple controls the world by controlling his own ecosystem if we do it working together between the different kinds of industries and With the politicians Because again, this is not a project for the industrial sector. It's as much for the financial sector It's as much for the interim circuit It's for the accounting sector to show clearly that there is no money disappearing in this project It's for the media sector I want to challenge the media to report on this project not by creating a few scandals And then next week tell about another scandal But to consistently create a positive outcome and collaboration for all of the parties involved From now until 2020. That's a big challenge for the media industry and Of course our politicians because they will need to guide this all And now I would like to close Mr. Chairman by Proposing something different rather than you asking me questions. I'm going to ask you a few questions so my first question who has Been reading all of the text around the flagship areas for 2020 Who in this room? Sorry, but a flag wasn't that something to run behind to believe in So if you haven't been reading this day, oh two persons here in the front. Congratulations. I tried to read it I didn't get to the end So who believes this Text really engages. I think the answer is simple. I don't have to ask it even yeah So who believes now that a project like African Drive Could engage a lot of people could really create interest in what European technologies can do Could really create young engineers or young people 15 year olds that start thinking about becoming an engineer Becoming a scientist who solves these problems for the world who in this room would like to be in such a project Thank you very much Thank you