Using US Patent Analysis to Monitor the Technological Trend in the Field of Gastrointestinal Microbiome - Implications on Korean Medicine Research and Development

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to provide direction for future research in the field of Korean medicine by analyzing microbiome based technologies emerging as a new diagnostic and treatment paradigm.Methods: To achieve the purpose of the study intellectual property data was used. After establishing citation network from registered microbiome-related US patents, citation network was analyzed by knowledge persistence-based main path approach to understanding technological trajectories. Furthermore, community detection algorithms were used to quantitatively identifying specific technological domain in a particular time period.Results: Results shows that early technologies in livestock industry contribute most to the recent patents. Knowledge in the patents flow through the path of food and beverage technological domain, and finally are inherited to the recent development of diagnosis, treatment and prevention technic.Conclusions: This study indicate that developing diagnostic tools which can link the composition of microbiome to specific diseases should be given high priority. Researches should lead to novel therapeutic strategies. Specifically, improving reliability of pattern identification and finding effective therapeutic compositions based on principles of Korean medicine is necessary.