*4.1. Temporal Trend in the Medicine Area*

Although civil society is sometimes critical of medical patents, as universal access to medicines is understood from a human point of view. However, the WHO (World Health Organization) itself is in favor of this system, since it is clear that, after basic research, they have to be manufactured, and in order for them to be affordable, investment has to be made in their manufacture, which is determined by exclusivity or patents. Furthermore, the WHO itself makes it clear that it is possible to develop many medicines that are patentable (i.e., that meet the requirement of novelty and inventive step), but this does not mean that they add value to existing medicines. According to the data of the IQWiG (Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care—Institut für Qualität und Wirtschaftlichkeit im Gesundheitswesen), of all the medicines that are patented annually, only 10% add great value to what already exists, and only 17% add considerable value, i.e., only 27% of these medicines should be incorporated into the health system.

In the previous sections, a ranking of universities has been established according to their transfer, but, although the Spanish university is not singularly specialized, except as mentioned for certain technical universities. It is necessary to establish a ranking by areas of knowledge. In this way it will be possible to know the transference and the relevance of a university in a specific area.

In this study, the publications classified within the category of medicine only are 11,287, but there are about 4100 that are also indexed in other categories. If we compare the field of medicine with the total, we can see that it has been very stable over the years. In Figure 10, it can be seen how scientific works classified in the category of medicine have always been at least 20% of the works cited by patents.

**Figure 10.** Medicine category display in relation to the total number of publications cited in patents.
