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International Journal of Bioprinting Advances for 3D-printed oral drug delivery systems

Figure 2. Query for 3D printing of oral drug delivery systems.

into different categories, but only the four categories In terms of number of publications per country, a total of
relevant to the objective of this study were analyzed, 35 countries were identified, the top 5 countries with most
which are end-user applications, quality assurance, user publications being England, with a total of 30, followed
acceptability, and digital technologies, representing a total by China with 18, the United States with 15, Germany
of 149 research documents. A scientometric analysis was with 11, and lastly South Korea with 8. By identifying
carried out to determine publication trends in the scientific some of the key players in 3D-printed pharmaceuticals by
literature, provide statistics about the publication output country (Figure 4), the level of technological and industrial
rate , and uncover key players, innovation activities, and development in 3D-printed pharmaceuticals of a country
[32]
main technology trends . Expert feedback was used as is a factor that influences the number of publications per
[33]
support at all stages of the CTI methodology to validate country. As shown in Figure 4, regarding the top three
the results obtained. countries, England has many companies and universities
working with 3D printing of DDS; FabRx and the University
3. Results and discussion College London (UCL) have a large repository of published
research papers. In the case of China, Triastek (located in
In this section, the results of the analysis are presented. Nanjing) accounts for 20% of 3D-printed pharmaceutical
As previously mentioned, a total of 149 publications were applications, while in the United States, companies include
analyzed based on the categories end-user applications, Aprecia Pharmaceuticals and Merck.
quality assurance, user acceptability, and digital
technologies; the distribution of publications is shown The number of publications related to the 3D printing
in Figure 3. of oral DDS demonstrated a significant increase after 2017,
Through the scientometric analysis, the number of creating a positive trend over the past 7 years. During
publications per country, number of publications per this time, aside from partnerships within companies,
country and key players, number of publications per year, technologies like M3DIMAKER™, MED®, CraftMake™,
number of publications per research area, and number of and MakerBot® were introduced, facilitating investigation
publications per journal were determined. In addition, and product development. For the year 2023, the number
technological trends were determined in each category. of publications has declined; however, since the data was

Volume 9 Issue 6 (2023) 506 https://doi.org/10.36922/ijb.1119