Company profile

Fresenius Medical Care is the world’s leading provider of products and services for people with chronic kidney failure. Around 3.2 million patients with this disease worldwide regularly undergo dialysis treatment. Dialysis is a vital blood cleansing procedure that substitutes the function of the kidney in case of kidney failure.

We care for more than 325,000 patients in our global network of more than 3,800 dialysis clinics. At the same time, we operate 41 production sites on all continents, to provide dialysis products such as dialysis machines, dialyzers and related disposables.

Our strategy is geared toward sustainable growth. We aim to continuously improve the quality of life of patients with kidney disease by offering innovative products and treatment concepts of the highest quality.

Fresenius Medical Care’s corporate headquarters are in Bad Homburg v.d.H., Germany. The headquarters of North America are in Waltham, Massachusetts and the headquarters of Asia-Pacific are located in Hong Kong.

Fresenius Medical Care around the world

Fresenius Medical Care in numbers

•   We offer dialysis services and products in around 150 countries.
•   Every 0.7 seconds we provide a dialysis treatment somewhere on the globe.
•   We employ around 111,000 employees in around 50 countries.
•    One in two dialysis machines worldwide is made by Fresenius Medical Care.
•   In 2017, Fresenius Medical Care generated revenues of around 17.8 billion Euro.
•   Fresenius Medical Care has been developing and producing dialysis products for more than four decades.

Research and Development

Developing innovative products and continously improving our dialysis treatments are an inherent part of our growth strategy. Our worldwide research and development (R&D) activities, which are centrally managed by the Global Research & Development division (GRD), enable us to develop products efficiently and to systematically promote the exchange of knowledge and technology between regions.

Global Research & Development Strategy

Health care systems face major financial challenges now and in the long term. With regard to our research and development activities, this confirms our intention to develop innovative products that are not only of high-quality, but are also affordable. Based on our experience in operating our own dialysis clinics, we do not consider these to be incompatible aims.

Our R&D strategy is globally oriented. This enables us to respond even better to the worldwide rise in demand for high-quality yet cost-efficient treatment methods. In doing so, we also take regional market conditions into account and offer a differentiated product range. In future, we intend to deliver innovative, competitive products even more efficiently and strengthen our focus on developing countries.

In addition to R&D activities carried out at our company, we collaborate with external partners with the aim of building a comprehensive innovation and technology network. These include numerous academic institutions, such as research institutes at renowned universities in the U.S. Another partner is the Renal Research Institute (RRI) in New York. This subsidiary of Fresenius Medical Care North America is a leading institution in the field of clinical research into chronic kidney failure. Together we are working on fundamental issues relating to dialyis treatment. We are increasingly collaborating with start-ups to encourage an open culture that promotes innovation and to gain access to the latest technologies both in our core business as well as in adjacent areas that are of future strategic interest to us.

R&D Resources

In 2017, Fresenius Medical Care spent a total of around €131M on research and development (2016: €147M). R&D expenditure corresponded to around 4% (2016: 5%) of our health care product revenue. Around a quarter of our R&D expenditure went into funding advance developments, laying the foundation for future product innovations. At the end of 2017, our patent portfolio comprised some 8,396 property rights in approximately 1,253 patent families, i.e. groups of patents linked to the same invention. Our R&D work in the financial year produced around 126 additional patent families. A broad portfolio of patents will provide us with a wide range of treatment options in this competitive area in future.

In 2017, 825 highly qualified employees (full-time equivalents) worked for Fresenius Medical Care in R&D worldwide (2016: 794). They come from various backgrounds: Physicians work side by side with software specialists, business economists and engineers in interdisciplinary teams. Around 530 employees - the majority of our R&D staff - are based in Europe. Most activities are carried out at our facilities in Schweinfurt and Bad Homburg v.d. Höhe (Germany). Other R&D sites are in St. Wendel (Germany), Bucharest (Romania) and Krems (Austria). In the U.S. we maintain centers of excellence for the development of devices in Concord (California) and for dialyzers and other disposable products in Ogden (Utah). Development activities in Shanghai and Changshu (China) are focused on the growing demand for cost-effective dialysis systems in Asia and emerging markets. The global R&D organization coordinates collaboration and technology exchange among the various sites. As part of our innovation culture, we also strive to carry out research and development responsibly.