Intellectual Capital Management in Digital Healthcare. Intellectual Property Strategies for Smart Dressings
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Typ
Examensarbete för masterexamen
Program
Entrepreneurship and business design (MPBDP), MSc
Publicerad
2019
Författare
Eriksson, Lovisa
Thunholm, Susanna
Modellbyggare
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Sammanfattning
Wound care is a segment in medical technology that is becoming increasingly important to
improve as we are due to our modern lifestyle more prone to acquire wounds. An increased
incidence of diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular diseases as well as an ageing population are
factors increasing the risks. Today, five to seven million people in the US acquire chronic
wounds annually, which corresponds to treatment costs up to $20 billion. Market trends
implicate that the wound care segment will be impacted and innovated by digital
transformation, just like any other segment in healthcare, and the technology of smart
dressings could be the next innovation that addresses the difficult challenges in advanced
wound care.
Smart dressings are wound dressings with the purpose to monitor certain wound
characteristics, which will be processed to provide an output for treatment recommendations
or actions. Smart dressings comprise the dressing as such, but is also connected to a network
where data can be exchanged, processed and stored. The measured wound characteristics will
thus be analyzed to either give an indication of the progression of the wound healing or
provide for a treatment adapted to the wound characteristics.
This thesis investigates whether a global actor that operates within wound care has the
intellectual assets and properties to create and control a smart dressing. The research focused
on the current status of the market, which showed an immaturity with no launched products,
and the patent landscape, that presented a scarcity of relevant patents, a majority of pending
patents. The patent landscape could be seen as a field that combines two mature and dense
patent fields - wound dressings and electronics. Therefore, it could be considered difficult to
obtain patent protection as the threshold for genericity is low for both of the mature fields,
hence, the technical scope needs specificity to achieve patent eligibility. A knowledge gap
was discovered in the patent landscape that revealed an uncertainty of what wound
characteristic to measure, which could be an opportunity to leverage on if one learn what
parameter is the most crucial for wound healing progression.
The patent landscape was complemented by a value chain analysis to examine opportunities
of value creation, which resulted in value propositions for patients of improved wound
treatment and data generated value propositions of e.g. personalized care and product
development opportunities. The current situation of the market and patent landscape together
with the opportunities of value creation, could be leveraged on if the right capabilities are
achieved in combination with suitable control mechanisms. An intellectual property strategy
could and should include patent protection of the smart dressing system with physical
components and software implemented functions. The functions enabling management of the
generated data are eligible for other intellectual property rights, such as copyright, trademark,
design and trade secrets.