Abstract
As population grows and ages, the need of medical service and equipment grows rapidly. According to United Nations Population Division (2015), the current world population is 7.3 billion and is estimated to reach 9.8 billion by 2050. Visiongain (2015) forecasted that the medical market will expand and grow significantly in the coming decade, from 2013 to 2017, the medical devices market will grow from 300 billion US dollars to nearly 400 billion. To satisfy the demands of medical market, the growing technology-Additive Manufacturing (AM) has been viewed as a game changer in this industry and it is also applicable to several industries. Its brand new manufacturing processes and highly customized features are especially suitable for medical/dental industries since patients require products or service based on personal conditions. This research focused on the combination of dental industries and AM technologies using patent analytic approaches to study the development of industries and markets. Since patents contain rich information and innovative knowledge of technologies, they can be used to study technology trend, technology life cycle, and forecasting future market development. The patent analysis methodologies in this research include strategic patent search, manegement map analysis, and technical map analysis. After patents screening and review, the Technology-Function (TF) Matrix is constructed for studying the distribution of patents under AM technologies and dental applications. The TF matrix is constructed automatically through text mining and key term comparison techniques, which is a new approach different from traditional hand-made TF matrix. Furthermore, the major companies, important patents, and research initiatives of Taiwan Ministry of Science and Technology (MoST) will also be discussed in analysis results. This research uses additive manufacturing applied on dental industry as a case and provides insights of development trend and market opportunities.