Competitive and technology intelligence to reveal the most influential authors and inter-institutional collaborations on additive manufacturing for hand orthoses

Additive manufacturing (AM) is revolutionizing the health industry, where itprovides innovative solutions for the production of personalized devices, such as hand orthoses.However, the scientific research dynamics in this topic have not yet been investigated. Thisstudy aims to fill this gap through the application of a competitive and technology intelligence(CTI) methodology enhanced by a scientometric and network map analysis. Major advances inthe fabrication of hand orthoses using AM, the presence of collaborations, and the mostinfluential authors were determined. Specifically, network map analysis, bibliographicoccurrence and bibliographic coupling were conducted on documents retrieved from Scopus andthe Web of Science (WoS), and on patents from more than 104 authorities. Results showed onlynine published patent families and 34 research articles on this topic from 2006 to 2016. Tenpapers concern static orthoses, while 24 deal with dynamic orthoses and exoskeletons. Theindegree and outdegree parameters and the betweenness centrality of these documents enabledus to determine the most cited authors and instances of collaboration (papers co-authoredbetween institutions). Dr. Paterson A. M. J. was the most influential author, with fourpublications with the highest betweenness centrality in the network (189), which accounted forthe most cited document with five citations. The institution with the most publications wasLoughborough University, with four papers, and the collaboration between affiliations was rare.These documents review important aspects of manufacturing orthoses using AM, andadditionally pay particular attention to the importance of personalised orthoses where AMcontributes. Notably, these papers focused primarily on studies for the development of amethodology for the fabrication of hand orthoses using AM, but they do not present anyapplication. This research provides insights to better understand the dynamics of research anddevelopment in the orthopaedics domain, specifically for hand orthoses.