COVID-19 전후 의료 진단 특허 출원 동향 분석

Objectives : This study aims to analyze the patents filed in the clinical diagnosis sector where technologies have been actively developed since the advent of the 4th industrial revolution. Methods : The analysis has been conducted in two ways - the period from 2016 to 2021 and the time points before and after COVID-19 - by visualizing based on the word cloud method. Results : Over two thirds of patents has been filed in the A61B sector (71.8%) and cure, sensor, self diagnosis, control, and breakdown have been observed in the period above. During the overall period (2016~2021), ‘ultrasound’(7.5%), ‘image’(5.1%), ‘skin’(4.0%), ‘treatment’(3.4%), and ‘artificial intelligence(2.5%)’ were the frequently patent applications technologies. In addition, ‘ultrasound’(6.2%), ‘image’(5.5%), ‘skin’(4.0%), ‘treatment’ (3.7%), and ‘portable’(1.7%) appeared most frequently before COVID-19 whereas ‘ultrasound(5.5%)’, ‘artificial intelligence(4.2%)’, ‘diagnostic device’(1.9%), ’dimentia’(1.6%), and ‘diagnostic kit’(1.4%) emerged the most after COVID-19. Conclusion : This study is meaningful in that it showed the technological development trend in the digital diagnosis sector and it was found that the Korean medicine field should contribute to this field more actively in the future.