‘2016 State of Innovation Report’: Biotech innovation decreases by 2%

Biotech was the only technology area out of 12 studied that has shown a global decline in its year-on-year innovation, declining by 2%, according to the “2016 State of Innovation Report: Disruptive, Game-Changing Innovation” by Thomson Reuters.

This decrease, from 2014 to 2015, is a significant change from the 7% overall increase from 2013 to 2014. Innovation in the study was measured by patenting activity.

From all the subsectors, the steepest drops were in the diagnosis of diseases, by 20%, and drug discovery, by 13%. These were followed by cancer treatment and genetically modified crops, both dropping by 9%.

The leading countries in biotech innovation are China, France, Germany, South Korea and the US.

Although the report shows a decline in innovation in the biotech sector, it predicts that this might change in the future. The reason for the decline is that the technologies are still in early stages, but the report says that it is important to pay attention to the output of its activity as it has an immense impact on life.

The rest of the 12 studied sectors show a patent growth at an annualised rate of 13.7%. The growth was led by significant increases in the medical devices, home appliances, aerospace and defence, information technology, and the oil and gas sectors.

“The last year has been marked by a series of epic breakthroughs: the first autonomous cars tested on public highways, the longest-ever human space mission, the first biosimilar drug approval—all of these were made possible by disrupting conventional boundaries and testing the limits of human creativity,” said Vin Caraher, president, Intellectual Property & Science, Thomson Reuters.

The study also reveals that the number of global scientific literature publications, in contrast to overall patent volume, has declined. This suggests that there may be a slowdown in future innovation growth.