Tech Trends Münsterland

Digitalisation is one of the very big topics of our time and will remain so for the foreseeable future. It is above all a cross-cutting issue and is applied in many entrepreneurial areas and industries. The focus here is on developments that could also become interesting for small and medium-sized enterprises in the near future. The 13 selected future topics are therefore not abstract research results, but technologies that in many cases are already being used in practice today or will be in the near future.

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Medicine in the 21st century will change as fast as never before - and with it the healthcare system. Groundbreaking developments in research and digitisation will enable the evaluation and use of huge amounts of data in a short time. This will completely change our knowledge about health and being healthy as well as about the development, prevention and healing of diseases. At the same time, the way medicine is practised will change fundamentally.

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The circular economy serves the conservation of natural resources including climate protection, the protection of the environment and human health, taking into account the precautionary principle. Furthermore, it aims at securing raw materials. The circular economy should contribute to reducing the life-cycle negative impacts of both materials and products - by saving primary materials and substituting them with secondary materials - and waste generation and waste management.

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The conversion of primary raw materials into materials for products and services for human use will always have an impact on the environment. However, the goal of a sustainable economy is to minimise the negative impact on ecosystems. A central approach in this context is the circular economy and, in particular, the reduction of material flows. At the same time, substances with environmental and health-friendly properties must be increasingly developed and used throughout the entire life cycle.

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Networked production is the basis of Industry 4.0: intelligent, digitally networked systems that make largely self-organised production possible. When people, machines, plants, logistics and products communicate and cooperate directly with each other, flexible production, even of individual items, becomes possible. Flexibility, in turn, increases the complexity of work processes. Smart software and strict compliance with norms and standards help to meet this challenge. IT security also plays a prominent role in networked production.

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