Employees

In 2010, a total of 503 employees (full-time equivalents) worked for Fresenius Medical Care in research and development worldwide (2009: 477). They come from various backgrounds: Physicians work side by side with software specialists, business economists and engineers. With close to 335 employees, our largest R&D unit is in the International segment; charts 2.3.4 and 2.3.5 provide an overview of their level of education and their professional background. Most of our R&D employees work in our German Schweinfurt and Bad Homburg facilities, with smaller teams in St. Wendel (Germany) and in Bucharest (Romania), where an R&D competency center specializing in software development has been set up. In addition, we have R&D teams in North America and the Asia-Pacific region.

In September 2010, a new R&D department for sorbent technology see glossary with six employees started working in Krems in Austria. Fresenius Medical Care has been manufacturing products for various sorbent therapies in Krems since 2003 – for the Prometheus system for removing toxins from patients with liver failure, for procedures to remove antibodies from the bloodBloodFluid circulating in the body composed of plasma and cells (red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets, etc.). The main function of blood is to transport oxygen, nutrients and hormones to the cells and to remove waste products (such as carbon dioxide and urea). Blood also regulates the water and electrolyte balance and helps fight off contaminants as part of the immune system. stream of patients with severe autoimmune disorders, and most recently for the DALI procedure to treat familial hypercholesterolemia, a hereditary metabolic disorder. Over the next few years, we intend to expand our facility in Krems into a competency center for sorbent technology, as we consider this technology to have great potential for new blood purification applications and therapies.