While ophthalmic instrument production was commenced at Carl Zeiss at the end of the 19th century, the surgical disciplines were not discovered as a field of application for the medical optics made in Oberkochen until after Carl Zeiss had been split up as a result of the Cold War. The OPMI 1 surgical microscope developed by Hans Littmann in 1953 was the first of a new class of instruments, and – as the standard in microsurgery – it became a permanent feature in clinical practice.
In December 1990, even before the official reunification of Carl Zeiss, the management teams of the Medical Technology divisions in East and West agreed to have Oberkochen focus on surgical microscopes, while Jena was to devote itself to ophthalmic instrument technology. When a fundamental restructuring of the Carl Zeiss Group was initiated in 1995, the remodeling of Medical Technology was already largely complete. And yet one basic problem remained: Oberkochen, Jena, and Carl Zeiss subsidiary Humphrey Instruments in Dublin, California, all worked independently of each other and on separate projects. There was hardly any synergy, and the instruments from each individual site rather gave the impression that they were from completely different manufacturers.
The road from individual products to complex solutions began at the turn of the millennium. In 2002, the founding of Carl Zeiss Meditec AG became a reality. Initially, just the medical technology divisions of the Carl Zeiss sites in Jena and Dublin, California, as well as Jena-based Asclepion Meditec AG were united in the new company. The formation of this company as a reverse IPO (the acquisition of a company already listed on the stock exchange) solved several problems at once: It gave Carl Zeiss access to business with refractive lasers (hitherto the sole domain of Asclepion), strengthened the Jena location, enabled extra capital to be raised on the stock market, and placed all the medical technology activities dispersed among the various sites under one umbrella. The process was completed with the reform of the Foundation in 2004 and the new opportunity for Carl Zeiss Meditec AG to acquire the Oberkochen OPMI business.
However, this was just the beginning of implementing the actual strategy of complete diagnostic and treatment solutions. Through the acquisition of IOLTECH in 2005 and of Acri.Tec in 2007, Carl Zeiss Meditec AG expanded its portfolio, offering products such as intraocular lenses and consumables for eye surgery. Thus, Carl Zeiss moved beyond the traditional divisions of Optics and Precision Mechanics towards consumer goods less impacted by economic cycles. This certainly contributed to the fact that Carl Zeiss Meditec AG proved to be a stable pillar of the Group's activities during the global financial and economic crisis in 2009. Since the health sector continues to grow on a global scale, the forecast for Carl Zeiss Meditec AG is downright positive.