The implementation of the first National Conference on Health Economy resulted from the activities and recommendations of the Federal Government's “Round Table East” and the discussion about building growth cores in the new federal states. The activities triggered by the conferences were to focus on stabilising and further developing the respective regional and sectoral development potentials and to initiate a broad and intensive dialogue between politics and industry. A total of around 700 participants were welcomed to Rostock for the first National Conference on Health Economy in 2005. In the accompanying exhibition, 29 exhibitors presented their products and services. The conference dealt with the entire breadth of the health economy. In plenary lectures, the speakers dealt with the general trends in the health economy and with international developments. The four forums focused on the main areas of biotechnology and medical technology as supply industries, the role of nutrition as a health factor, the growing importance of health prevention and the opportunities in health tourism. Politically, the federal government departments involved as well as all federal government departments were represented at ministerial or state secretary level. This underlines the high overall political importance of the health economy. At the end of the conference, the participants agreed on a uniform definition of the term health economy:

Health economy comprises the production and marketing of goods and services that serve to maintain and restore health.