Identifying Areas of Technology Commercialization in the Biomedical Sector: An Integrated Analysis of Patents and Publications

Representative sources of technical information include papers, which are the results of research, and patents, which are the core of technologies. The number of papers and patents is increasing rapidly, and technology commercialization activities in which papers are linked to technology patents are also rapidly developing. Therefore, the necessity of using papers and patents to discover new technological opportunities is emerging. However, despite the semantic similarities between papers and patents, the format and classification systems of documents are very different, so it is difficult to exchange information between documents. This study utilized papers and patent documents to discover new technologies and identify technological opportunities. To overcome the limitations of using paper and patent documents mentioned above, mutual information was utilized by integrating the paper and patent documents and constructing a keyword network using LDA topic modeling and W2Vec methods. In this study, through the results of comparative analysis between papers and patents, first, the research results were uncovered in the white space of technologies that are not linked to patent technologies. Second, a technology potential index is present to evaluate the possibility that the research results can be linked to technology. Third, a technology marketability index that can evaluate the commercialization value of technology is presented. Fourth, through core keyword network analysis, technology trends were identified and technology gaps were discovered, thereby discovering areas in which new technology development is possible. This study contributes to the use of more information by overcoming the limitation of mutual information exchange, even though paper and patent documents contain a lot of technical information. Furthermore, new technologies were discovered, technologies were identified, and technological gaps were uncovered through the results of linking and comparing the paper and patent documents. The technology index, the outcome of this study, enables analyzing the potential and marketability of the technology and evaluating its value. Core keyword network analysis contributed to discovering technical gaps and identifying new technical sectors by utilizing technology connection information through paper and patent documents. This study is expected to be useful for the development of new technologies and the identification of opportunities by presenting information utilization plans through linking papers and patents.