Gwak Jae Ha, Sohn So Young
Department of Information and Industrial Engineering, Yonsei University, 134 Shinchon-dong, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
PLoS One. 2017 Mar 17;12(3):e0174203. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0174203. eCollection 2017.
Recently, the need for rapid wound-healing has significantly increased because of the increasing number of patients who are diagnosed with diabetes and obesity. These conditions have contributed to a surge in the number of patients with chronic wounds worldwide. Furthermore, many cost-effective wound-healing technologies have been developed in order to keep up with the increased demand. In this paper, we performed a quantitative study of the trends associated with wound-healing technologies using patent data.
We analyzed the trends considering four different groups of patent applicants: firms, universities, research institutes, and individuals using a structural topic model. In addition, we analyzed the knowledge flow between patent applicants using citation analysis, and confirmed the role of applicants in the knowledge-flow network using k-means clustering. As a result, the primary wound-healing technology patents applied for by the four groups varied considerably, and we classified the roles of patent applicants were found in the knowledge-flow network.
Our results showed the organizations that are leading each area of wound-healing technology. Furthermore, from the results, we identified specific institutions that are efficient for spreading knowledge related to wound-healing technology based on the patents. This information can contribute to the planning of investment strategies and technology policies related to wound-healing.
近年来,由于糖尿病和肥胖症患者数量的增加,对快速伤口愈合的需求显著上升。这些病症导致全球慢性伤口患者数量激增。此外,为了满足不断增长的需求,人们开发了许多具有成本效益的伤口愈合技术。在本文中,我们利用专利数据对与伤口愈合技术相关的趋势进行了定量研究。
我们使用结构主题模型分析了四类不同专利申请人(公司、大学、研究机构和个人)的趋势。此外,我们利用引文分析研究了专利申请人之间的知识流动,并通过k均值聚类确定了申请人在知识流动网络中的作用。结果发现,这四类申请人申请的主要伤口愈合技术专利差异很大,我们还在知识流动网络中对专利申请人的角色进行了分类。
我们的研究结果显示了在伤口愈合技术各个领域处于领先地位的组织。此外,基于这些结果,我们确定了在专利基础上能有效传播伤口愈合技术相关知识的特定机构。这些信息有助于伤口愈合相关投资策略和技术政策的规划。