Evolutionary growth of knowledge and new technological directions of non-thermal plasma technology in medicine

The paper analyzes the evolution of scientific production and patenting, main proxies of scientific and technological breakthroughs, concerning non-thermal plasma for biomedical applications in order to detect emerging technological trajectories. New scientific directions of non-thermal plasma in medicine play a critical role because they might generate important innovations that could change the clinical practice. Occurrences of scientific products and patents are retrieved with Boolean queries on SciVerse database after a meticulous procedure to delineate the most promising applications in biomedical sciences. Data are analyzed with two methodological approaches: an exponential model of growth and regression analysis. Results show high rates of scientific growth for applications of nonthermal plasma in disinfection, anticancer treatments, dermatology, whereas for surgery, although values of occurrences are similar to the other research fields, it shows a different trend that after the 2005 is decreasing due to the peculiar application to materials for implantation. Some arguments are discussed at the end of the paper.