Since March, Dr Jonathan Kopf is the third managing director on the board of medica Medizintechnik GmbH. Dr Kopf has high ambitions: “Due to the demographic change and the corresponding increase in strokes, the need for robotic-assisted devices, to significantly improve therapy outcomes, offers an enormous growth potential. Furthermore, present restrictions due to Covid-19 have made daily exercise essential for the elderly and patients. Thanks to the expertise and long experience of our employees and our world-class and complete solutions, THERA-Trainer enjoys excellent reputation and has tremendous market potential. The goal for us now is maintain this excellent reputation and realise this tremendous market potential.”

New markets, new solutions

Over the past years, the long-standing managing directors, Peter Kopf and Otto Höbel, put THERA-Trainer, a globally acting “hidden champion,” in the field of robotic-assisted movement therapy. Company founder Peter Kopf describes his vision like: „Motion is life – and a life without motion is hard to imagine. With our therapy devices, we like to return the necessary daily motion and thus independence and joy of life to the elderly and motion impaired patients. And”, he adds, “our slogan life in motion has been a commitment I made to myself!“

Amongst others, Dr Kopf will be responsible for New Business Development and thus, he sets a clear strategic focus on accessing promising new markets and development of outcome-driven new solutions.

Optimal user experience thanks to years of research

Presently, more than 70,000 patients use THERA-Trainers – in inpatient and outpatient clinics as well as at home. An essential element for the huge success has been the expertise in developing active-assistive drives and therapeutic software based on years of research. These technologies enable elderly people as well as motion impaired patients to exercise from a wheelchair directly – always aiming to keep or improve their walking ability. Otto Höbel puts the challenges in the field of development in a nutshell: “We want to offer smart and effective solutions in all phases of rehabilitation – while keeping them easy to use and affordable. The biggest challenge for our engineers and developers is to make our products both easy to use and intuitive. Our goal being that our patients benefit from the motivating and engaging user experience, while he or she is unaware of all the sensory technology and intelligent algorithms in the background.” In the field of gait rehabilitation, THERA-Trainer offers the most comprehensive and efficient complete solution world-wide.

Growth – “at home” and internationally

With professional solutions based on solid principles, today THERA-Trainer is represented in about 70 countries world-wide and has her own subsidiaries in Slovenia, France and the US. The company continues to grow in its home market Germany. Presently, medica’s office building is being extended by about 2,000 square meters. A necessity – for strategic growth.

An important factor for the success has been the unique corporate culture based on partnership shaped by its 110 employees. “A pinch of ‘THERA-Magic’ makes medica a very special company“, Peter Kopf concludes. “Especially, when our main competitors have been bought out by investors from China, we take pride in being a family company, based out of Hochdorf, helping our patients world-wide.”