Today, the wave of technology, digital services and online options has empowered patients to take healthcare into their own hands. The evolution of personal healthcare.

Our approach to tackling healthcare challenges began with a committed partnership between our founder and a British surgeon in the 1800s. Today, this commitment has evolved into how we develop some of our greatest incontinence solutions.

The power of partnership and a commitment to care has fuelled the evolution of wound care for more than 140 years.

Back in 1847, Ignaz Semmelweis’ idea was rejected by the medical community. Today, he’s known as the “saviour of mothers”. With his work, he laid the foundation for our modern hospital hygiene and antisepsis.

Discover how Europe’s hygiene pioneers each contributed to the evolution of hand hygiene to go further for health. The evolution across Europe led to the advanced protection we have today.

After losing its locations outside Germany due to the Second World War, the PAUL HARTMANN company eschewed foreign investments for quite some time. That only changed in 1972 with the founding of HARTMANN-FRANCE S.A. Today, the Group is represented in more than 30 countries. Part three of the company's history – from 1945 to the present.

Bringing to market the dressings for wound treatment was a joint effort between the physician Sir Joseph Lister and the PAUL HARTMANN company. The new products were a real sensation: thanks to them, patient mortality fell rapidly. Hartmann focused on marketing and expansion – part two of the company's history, 1873-1945.

When Paul Hartmann's family business was founded in 1818 in the Swabian town of Heidenheim, there was no way to know that it would one day become a leading international provider of medical and hygiene products: today's global group was once purely a textile company. Here is part one of the company's history – from 1800 to 1873.