Leader: Maria Luisa Mancusi (Unicatt); Other collaborator(s):
Patent protection is an important tool to protect innovations and help secure or maintain a strong position in the market. This is also and importantly the case for companies operating in digital healthcare technologies, which continue to grow and become ever more important. This task uses patent data to explore the development of AI technologies and applications relevant for the healthcare industry by looking at the sources of innovation, type and geographical distribution of patent applicants and the role of universities, hospitals and research centres.
We are currently completing the dataset that we will exploit for our analysis by collecting patents relevant to age-related diseases granted at the European Patent Office (EPO), Japan Patent Office (JPO) and US Patent and Trademarks Office (USPTO). In order to identify patents that pertain to age-related diseases we are combining technology codes from the International Patent Classification (IPC) with a keyword-based approach. Using a keyword-based approach allows us to identify innovations that are relevant for the treatment of age-related diseases. In particular, we have identified age-related diseases as the 25 leading causes of Disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) for people 75 years old or older. After having identified these patents, we use IPC codes to refine our search in order and focus only on health-related patents. This allows us to reduce significantly the likelihood of false positives in our sample. At the same time, we are collecting firm and country level variables that will complement the dataset. The first part of our analysis is focused on the role artificial intelligence on technologies and patents relevant to age-related diseases.
Preliminary results show that the role of AI is still marginal but it’s increasing steadily over time, with a rapid acceleration in recent years. Furthermore, AI is playing a much more prominent role in medical technologies rather than in the pharmaceutical sector. In the second part of the analysis, we plan to use this dataset to study whether (and how much) population ageing directs innovation towards new technologies that pertain to age-related diseases and what are the relevant factors that shape this relationship.
Main policy, industrial and scientific implications: We expect population ageing to push firms to pursue new innovations regarding age-related diseases. However, the quantification of the causal effect of population ageing on these innovations remains an open question which we plan to address. Quantifying the magnitude of this relationship is important for policy makers in order to understand how much the private sector is delivering when it comes to the development of technologies relevant to age-related diseases. This is a key piece of information for policy makers in order to decide whether this kind of innovations need to be subsidized. Furthermore, particularly importantfrom a policy making perspective is also the understanding of what factors are shaping this relationship. For instance, our analysis will allow us to study whether there is heterogeneity in the effect of population ageing on the development of technologies relevant to age-related diseases due to the socio-economic characteristics of the older population, e.g. their income or living conditions. Investigating the factors that shape the effect of population ageing on medical innovation is important to understand how to best foster the development of new technologies in this realm.
Please see the next reporting period.
We aim to explore how demographic shifts are influencing innovation and their implications for various industries. Specifically, our research investigates the effects of population aging on the creation of new drugs, medical devices, and assistive technologies designed for the elderly. We follow a wide literature and use patents as a measure of innovation. We collect patents granted at the European Patent Office, Japan Patent Office and US Patent and Trademarks Office over the period 1990-2018 and focus on triadic patent families to control for the fact that patents’ innovative content and value are highly heterogeneous. We then identify patents that pertain to aging using a twofold approach. First, we identify patents representative of innovations aimed at dealing with age-related diseases: we do this by combining technology codes from the International Patent Classification (IPC) with a keyword-based approach. Then, we use data from WIPO to identify conventional and emerging assistive technologies (WIPO, 2021). We assign patents to firms, reconstruct their patenting history and use it to measure their exposure to different markets’ (countries’) population ageing. We use the resulting firm-level panel to explain the relationship between firms’ innovation in age-related technologies and their exposure to markets where demand for those technologies might be higher as suggested by demographic trends, while controlling for other relevant determinants. Our preliminary results show that population ageing pushes firms to pursue new innovations in age-related technologies: this is found in the pharmaceutical and medical devices fields, but quite importantly also for innovations in assistive technologies. The size of the effect is also meaningful, especially for emerging assistive technologies. These results underscore that population aging is a significant catalyst for the types of technologies that will be developed in the future.
The descriptive analysis conducted on our original dataset provides insightful observations about innovation trends in age-related diseases, highlighting several noteworthy characteristics:
The latter point is particularly compelling, as it underscores the growing interest of firms in addressing the unmet needs of an ageing population. This surge in participation suggests an awareness of the opportunities within this space, with firms committing resources to develop innovative technologies tailored to these evolving needs. Such advancements have the potential to fill existing gaps in healthcare solutions for the elderly. However, these trends raise important questions regarding the scale of effort required for these investments – especially given the potential complexity of the technologies – and the quality of the resulting innovations. Understanding these aspects is essential for assessing both the welfare and policy implications associated with these developments.
To gain some understanding of these questions, we enriched our original dataset by integrating information from the OECD Patent Quality Indicators Database. This database provides a robust set of indicators designed to assess the technological and economic value of patents filed with the European Patent Office (EPO) and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). By combining this supplemental information with our initial dataset, we were able to refine and deepen our descriptive analysis of trends in patents for age-related diseases.
Our findings reveal the following key developments:
Taken together, this descriptive evidence paints a promising picture of the interplay between demographic challenges and technological innovation. The ageing population, while presenting significant challenges to economic productivity and healthcare systems, also serves as a catalyst for advancements in science and technology. This conclusion is further bolstered by the observation that age-related innovations have become more valuable to the applicant firms in recent years. This is evidenced by a declining trend in the grant lag period, indicating that these innovations are being recognized and rewarded more swiftly by patenting authorities probably because applicants are well documenting their applications and following closely the work of the patent office.
This still preliminary evidence suggests a positive feedback loop where technological progress is both driven by and responsive to the needs of an ageing society, creating a fertile ground for sustained innovation and growth in the field of healthcare technologies.
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