Comprehensive study of the state of the art techniques & technologies, including patent search results

This task will develop an analysis of the state of the art at worldwide level, that is a key activity in order to understand what technologies are currently available and used and what R&D projects are being developed in the area of healthcare associated infections prevention. In the area concerned on the supply side and to complete a rigorous state of the art analysis, we will carry out a prior patent search. The patent information is an key source in order to investigate both the information technology and the data available in patent law relating to the selected patents. The patents in fact can be used as repositories of information, to find existing solutions to their technical problems, to know who is doing what or to avoid colliding with the rights already protected by others. In fact, they are the first source of published information on new technologies and about 80% of the information contained in patents is not published elsewhere. The search of specialized public databases allows to scout research projects, solutions and under development and testing technologies. The IP research database used could be, but not limited and exactly, the following: Espacenet (that permits patent search offering access to more than 80 million patent documents worldwide, containing information about inventions and technical developments from 1836 to today), Thomson Innovation (that enables IP search with the most trusted global patent data, scientific literature and business information, integrated with powerful analytics), WIPO (global forum for intellectual property services, policy, information and cooperation), ResearchGate (network dedicated to science and research), USPTO.gov (United States patent and trademark office's main web site) Google Scholar (that provides a search of scholarly literature across many disciplines and sources), UIBM (Italian patent and trademark office's main web site), Telemaco (Italian registry of businesses’ main web site). The patent analysis and the consultation of literature of scientific and technical publications will be conducted in order to establish a list of technologies, classified in terms of different solutions (then not limited to smart textiles) answering to the identified needs: degree of innovation/market readiness (TRL level), cost-effective, barriers to be deployed (if existing), etc. At the same time we will analyse the state-of-the-art on the demand side aimed to understand what are the most advanced solutions already adopted or under development by other public procurers or private sector customers on the EU Internal Market or in other parts of the world to address the same challenge as the one addressed by the PCP, what are the shortcomings of this state-of-the-art compared to the procurement needs of the buyers group.