Covid-19, the biomedical district of "miracles" in Mirandola

In the emergency that the country is experiencing, primarily to provide hospitals with adequate resuscitation beds and thus help the extraordinary work of doctors and nurses, an industrial district is really at the forefront: that of biomedical facility in Mirandola, in the Modena area. Founded in 1962 by the late Mario Veronesi in the garage of his home – yes, like so many famous American corporations – it is a district which, decade after decade, has been able to invest and internationalize, even managing to react to the terrible earthquake that hit that area in May 2012. The district is today leader in Europe and among the first in the world in the production of disposable plastic materials for use in the medical field and high-tech equipment used for various branches of healthcare.

Known by insiders, although without ever having reached the level of celebrity of some typical Made in Italy districts, it has literally "entered" the homes of Italians for a few weeks, because all the country's media - from Rai tiggì to SkyTG24 , from Mediaset to La7, from national to local newspapers – they have taken care of it. The question therefore becomes natural: but what exactly is produced in Mirandola?

More than answering the question in general (for this I refer to the book edited by Fabio Montella and I: “From the garage to the district. Mirandolese biomedical”, published by the Mill at the end of 2017), it suits focus on business who have helped lift the veil on this technological and productive jewel.

The owner of the Dimar of Medolla, Maurizio Borsari, already in the very first days of March declared: "The requests for helmets are continuous, we are doing our best". In fact, yours is a company specialized in the production of non-invasive ventilation systems (the so-called "helmets"), used in the treatment of respiratory insufficiencies with the advantage of avoiding intubation. The required increase in production is significant: from 300-500 pieces per day to at least 1.000-1.200 (but also 1.500). To complete the picture, Borsari specified that not only in Italy but worldwide "there are only three manufacturers of these devices". The reference is to his (Dimar, in fact), to another company with foreign capital also located in the Mirandola district (StarMed of the Intersurgical group), and a third in the Milan area (harol).

La Intersurgical, then, became the protagonist of another of the "miracles" of these days: it is the company that has created the circuit capable of connecting a single respirator to supply oxygen to two patients, instead of just one; circuit designed by prof. Marco Ranieri (University of Bologna, Sant'Orsola Hospital) together with colleagues from Lombardy.

One of the hallmarks of the Mirandola district, we could say right from the start, has been that ofopenness to foreign capital. After a series of waves of mergers and acquisitions, all the major companies in the area are headed by large German or Anglo-Saxon groups: among these, B. Braun Avitum e Medtronic with their respective Mirandola subsidiaries (B. Braun Avitum Italy, Mallinckrodt Dar), both now engaged in the battle against Covid-19 in their respective fields of activity (therapeutic systems for hemodialysis in the case of the Germans, filters and circuits for oxygen transport for the Irish). The examples and business cases certainly don't end there, e the official site of the district it represents a very useful tool to keep yourself updated on what you are doing on a daily basis.

It comes as no surprise that Mirandola is listed among the main "high-tech hubs" in the Monitor edited by Intesa Sanpaolo (ISP) and dedicated to four high-tech sectors of Italian industry: biomedical, ICT, pharmaceutical and aerospace. According to the Monitor, there are only five Italian biomedical poles: in addition to the Mirandola one, those of Bologna, Milan, Padova e Florence.

And moving now about 40 km, in the Bologna area, we find the Be Engineering of Crespellano. “The small company called by Conte: 'Our respirators in all hospitals'”, headlined the Corriere di Bologna (March 10). The company (11 million turnover of which 90% abroad, 35 employees) is the only Italian manufacturer of ventilators used in intensive care units. Gianluca Preziosa, general manager, has explained several times what is at stake: to supply 125 machines a week and 2.000 by July. It means quadruple the current production, allocating it entirely to the Italian market, starting with the three most affected regions: Lombardy, Emilia-Romagna and Veneto. This is why 25 military fitters have arrived at the company since last week. And it is for this same reason that Ferrari comes to his rescue: “We will make parts for the fans,” they declared in Maranello.

These are just some of the examples of what is happening in the biomedical technological poles of theEmilia Romagna and Lombardy, a region which – at the same time – maintains a robust manufacturing base, boasts a high degree of openness to international trade and has been hit hard by the spread of the Coronavirus. Along the Via Emilia, the list of gestures of extraordinary entrepreneurial ability and generosity is getting longer every day.

We take the masks, the insufficiency of which is one of the most sensitive nodes of the current Italian health situation. Well, we find the district of Mirandola, where the Tecnoline of Concordia on the Secchia, specialized in the production of dialysis bags and blood collection devices, has converted its production precisely to produce this fundamental protective device. And we find Mirandola again with its Tecnopolo – dedicated to the memory of Mario Veronesi – in partnership with a group of SMEs from the lower Reggiana area assisted by Unindustria Reggio Emilia, as Dario Di Vico wrote in the Corriere della Sera of 25 March: “La Nuova Sapi, which marketed products for public health and now becomes prime contractor of a production chain dedicated to masks. Not happy, the entrepreneurs from Reggio wanted to submit the product to the judgment of the colleagues of the Biomedical Technopole of Mirandola".

Remaining on the masks, we find Bologna again, where in Zola Predosa the GVC has started the production of FFP3 masks, which it already produced abroad. And, to stay in Emilia, the textile-clothing district of Carpi in the Modena area is investing in the production of masks, as well as other companies in the region.

If it is true that all these corporate experiences confirm the goodness of the district model, as applied in Emilia-Romagna, it is equally true that the story does not end here. It is, in fact, very recent news that the cineca – the well-known computing center of Casalecchio (Bologna) – is part of consortium (18 institutions and research centers in 7 European countries) led by Dompé Farmaceutici to carry on the Exscalate project, financed in recent days with 3 million euros by the European Commission precisely as part of the actions aimed at combating Covid-19. Exscalate is a system capable of evaluating 3 million molecules per second, starting from a "chemical library" of 500 billion molecules. It will therefore be the supercomputing capabilities of Cineca - which is already today the key node of the "Bologna Data Valley" in formation - placed at the service of this epochal fight against the virus. Some good news is also coming on this front.

In short, the threads that link scientific research, technology, industry, territory and human capital are very strong. It is an ancient lesson, which we rediscover today - at the time of the Coronavirus - in all its centrality.

What's more: it is a lesson that here, in Emilia-Romagna, is once again confirmed. And, perhaps, in Mirandola more than elsewhere. Mario Veronesi in his latest interview (given to Ilaria Vesentini and published in the 2017 volume cited above), speaking of the district he had founded more than fifty years earlier, reviewed everything that had been discovered, created, produced in the Mirandola biomedical: disposables; the first artificial kidney factory in Europe; blood circuits for hemodialysis; heart surgery oxygenators; circuits for anesthesia and resuscitation; helmets for non-invasive ventilation.

A very precious legacy, which many people are cultivating, with competence and generosity, for the good of all of us.