The future of three-dimensional printing in healthcare: A competitive technology intelligence-based scientometric and patent landscape of three-dimensional bioprinting
Three-dimensional (3D) printing is increasingly transforming healthcare through advances in materials and manufacturing processes, along with the growing demand for personalized therapeutic solutions. Although substantial research has focused on materials, fabrication processes, and specific biomedical applications, comparatively less attention has been devoted to systematically integrating scientific and patent evidence to identify technological trends, innovation trajectories, and emerging opportunities. In this context, competitive technology intelligence (CTI) provides a systematic framework for integrating scientific and patent information to examine technological evolution and support the identification of emerging trajectories and opportunities. This study applied the CTI methodology to quantitatively characterize the scientific and technological landscape of 3D bioprinting and tissue engineering, while fiber-based fabrication and 3D-printed oral drug delivery were incorporated as contextual domains based on published evidence. Scientific publications and patent families published between 2021 and 2025 on 3D bioprinting and tissue engineering were analyzed using Web of Science and The Lens platform. The final datasets comprised 6,916 scientific publications and 732 simple patent families. Annual scientific publication output increased from 1,061 records in 2021 to 1,705 in 2025 (+60.7%), while published simple patent families increased from 98 to 193 (+96.9%), with year-to-year variation. China and the United States showed the highest scientific publication output. The leading patent-family jurisdictions and filing routes represented in the dataset were the World Intellectual Property Organization (380 families), the United States (363), China (306), and the European Patent Office (219); these counts were non-exclusive. The most frequently represented International Patent Classification classes were B33Y10/00 (235 patent families), B33Y80/00 (234), and A61L27/52 (210). The results revealed an expansion of scientific and inventive activity, while their integration with published evidence highlighted persistent challenges in reproducibility, biological validation, scale-up, regulation, and clinical translation. Overall, this CTI-based landscape contributes to the identification of the scientific and technological trajectories in 3D bioprinting and tissue engineering, while situating them within the broader healthcare 3D printing context, and provides strategic insights to support research prioritization, innovation planning, and future translational efforts.
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