title: Identifying the trends in wound-healing patents for successful investment strategies.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  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.
  
  
  METHODS
  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.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Information and Industrial Engineering, Yonsei University, 134 Shinchon-dong, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Jae Ha
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Gwak
authors.affiliation: Department of Information and Industrial Engineering, Yonsei University, 134 Shinchon-dong, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: So Young
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3958-2269
authors.initials: SY
authors.lastname: Sohn
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D007449:Investments; D010330:Patents as Topic; D014945:Wound Healing