The healthcare industry continues to be a hotbed of innovation, with activity driven by telemedicine, real-time diagnostics, smart hospitals and access to digital therapies, and the growing importance of technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), the internet of things (IoT), augmented reality (AR), robotics and data management practices. In the last three years alone, there have been over 106,000 patents filed and granted in the healthcare industry, according to GlobalData’s report on Personal Health Data in Healthcare: EMR natural language processing.
According to GlobalData’s Technology Foresights, which uses over 443,000 patents to analyse innovation intensity for the healthcare industry, there are 200+ innovation areas that will shape the future of the industry.
EMR natural language processing is a key innovation area in personal health data
An electronic medical record (EMR) is a digital representation of all the data generally found in a doctor’s paper chart, including the patient’s medical history, diagnosis, prescriptions, dates of immunisations, allergies, lab results, and doctor’s notes. NLP can provide a plethora of information for comprehending such medical information.
GlobalData’s analysis also uncovers the companies at the forefront of each innovation area and assesses the potential reach and impact of their patenting activity across different applications and geographies. According to GlobalData, there are 30+ companies, spanning technology vendors, established healthcare companies, and up-and-coming start-ups engaged in the development and application of EMR natural language processing.
Key players in EMR natural language processing – a disruptive innovation in the healthcare industry
‘Application diversity’ measures the number of different applications identified for each relevant patent and broadly splits companies into either ‘niche’ or ‘diversified’ innovators.
‘Geographic reach’ refers to the number of different countries each relevant patent is registered in and reflects the breadth of geographic application intended, ranging from ‘global’ to ‘local’.
Patent volumes related to EMR natural language processing
Source: GlobalData Patent Analytics
Koninklijke Philips is one of the leading patent filers in the field of EMR natural language processing. Some other key patent filers in the field include Microsoft, and People.ai.
In terms of application diversity, Sysmex leads the pack, followed by Enlitis, Deep Bio and Samsung Group, respectively. By means of geographic reach, Abiomed held the top position, while SoftBank Group and Clinithink were in second and third spots, respectively.
Electronic healthcare systems store health reports and health record data in unstructured and non-standardised formats, with many of them still being handwritten files. Information from handwritten documents must be scanned and stored electronically. NLP approaches can be used to gather unstructured data, assess the grammatical structure, ascertain the information's meaning, and summarise it. NLP methods can thereby save costs and extract data for in-depth big data analyses.
To further understand the key themes and technologies disrupting the healthcare industry, access GlobalData’s latest thematic research report on Personal Health Data.
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GlobalData, the leading provider of industry intelligence, provided the underlying data, research, and analysis used to produce this article.
GlobalData’s Patent Analytics tracks patent filings and grants from official offices around the world. Textual analysis and official patent classifications are used to group patents into key thematic areas and link them to specific companies across the world’s largest industries.
