Science-Technology Linkage in the Field of Medical and Laboratory Equipment

The study aimed to investigate the relationship between science and technology in the field of medical and laboratory equipment registered at the United State Patent and Trademark Office database in the period 1984-2014. This research carried out as a descriptive-analytical study using scientometrics techniques. The statistical population is all patents of medical and laboratory equipment registered at the US Patent and Trademark Office during the period from 1984 to 2014, as well as all articles indexed in the period studied in the Web of Science. As a result of this search, 13424 patents and 16877 articles were retrieved. The number of patents and scientific articles published in the field of medical and laboratory equipment rose steadily between 1984 and 2014. Also, the number of citations to patents and scientific papers of this research area has grown exponentially in the given period. Citation rates for patents of medical and laboratory equipment area to US patents are much higher than their citations to non-US patents and other types of records. The scientific potential of medical and laboratory equipment is far more than technical capacity and researchers in the field of medical and laboratory equipment tend to cite to scientific articles rather than patents. This indicates the reliance of technology to science in the field of medical and laboratory equipment. Actually, the increasing role of scientific discoveries, which is accompanied by an increase in the number of citations to scientific documents, has led to the development of applied technologies in this field.