Electronic Health Records Patents: Leaders, Trends & White Space 2026
- Leadership is thin, not dominant. The top 5 assignees together hold only 10.6% of the 34,063 records in scope, and the top 10 just 16.5% — a long tail of single- and few-filing entrants does the rest.
- Filing has cooled slightly from its peak. Volume peaked in 2021 at 1,674 records and stood at 1,545 by 2024, an 8% pullback over that span rather than a collapse.
- Healthcare informatics claims dominate the class mix. G16H accounts for 37.8% of all records, more than double the next largest class, G06F digital data processing at 20.6%.
Filing growth compares 2021 (1,674 records) with 2024 (1,545) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 34,063 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What the Electronic Health Records patent record actually shows
Electronic Health Records patent activity spans 34,063 published records filed against a search built around EHR systems, patient data and clinical decision or workflow support. The dataset covers filings from 2015 through the 2026 cut-off, though publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so the final one or two years understate true filing activity. Filing volume rose through the late 2010s, peaked in 2021, and has since eased modestly rather than fallen off.
No single company controls the field. The leading assignee holds 1,341 records, but combined concentration at the top stays low, which means most of the claim space outside a few well-defended cores remains contestable for new entrants willing to file precisely.
Let an AI agent run this analysis on your own technology
Pick a task. Every answer cites the patents behind it.
Filing trends and technology composition
Two views of the same 34,063-record dataset: filing volume by year, and how records distribute across IPC subclasses. Because a single record can carry several IPC codes, the class shares below sum to well over 100% of the record total.
Filing trend, 2017-2026
Volume rose from 967 records in 2017 to a peak of 1,674 in 2021, then eased to 1,545 by 2024 — an 8% decline over that three-year window. 2025 and 2026 figures (down to 148 by 2026) are still filling in as publications catch up to filing dates, not evidence of a sudden drop-off.
IPC subclass composition
G16H (healthcare informatics) leads at 37.8% of all 34,063 records, followed by G06F (electric digital data processing) at 20.6% and A61B (diagnosis and surgery) at 15.6%. G06N (AI-based computing) sits at 5.9%, smaller than the informatics and processing classes but growing in relevance to how EHR systems are being re-architected around decision support.
Shares are the percentage of the 34,063 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Electronic Health Records Patent Landscape with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about electronic health records patent landscape and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaRepresentative and most-cited filings
Unified ai-driven clinical decision support and workflow optimization system (US20260066120A1)
Systems and methods for enhancing clinical decision-making and workflow optimization is proposed. An example method includes the steps of collecting data from multiple healthcare sources, including electronic health records (EHRs), medical imaging, and patient-reported outcomes. The example method also includes analyzing the collected data using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) algorithms to generate actionable insights. Additionally, the example method includes presenting the generated insights to healthcare providers through a unified interface.Filed by Clover Health, published 2026-03-05 — illustrative of how recent filings combine multi-source EHR data ingestion with AI-driven decision support inside a single claimed workflow.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20080004904A1 | Systems and methods for providing interoperability among healthcare devices | 1,924 |
| 2 | US20190200844A1 | Method of HUB communication, processing, storage and display | 1,720 |
| 3 | US20080001735A1 | Mesh network personal emergency response appliance | 1,720 |
| 4 | US5867821A | Method and apparatus for electronically accessing and distributing personal health care information and servi… | 1,694 |
| 5 | US20190201136A1 | Method of HUB communication | 1,637 |
| 6 | US20020010679A1 | Information record infrastructure, system and method | 1,634 |
| 7 | US8316237B1 | System and method for secure three-party communications | 1,622 |
| 8 | US5924074A | Electronic medical records system | 1,622 |
| 9 | US20100145146A1 | Endoscopic digital recording system with removable screen and storage device | 1,578 |
| 10 | US20190205567A1 | Data pairing to interconnect a device measured parameter with an outcome | 1,563 |
Citation counts favour older filings simply by virtue of age in circulation — treat them as a signal of influence on later filers, not a ranking of current technical importance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
Put your own technology through the same analysis
Eureka on the web
When you want the answer in the next five minutes.
The agent works the prompt against patents and technical literature, citing every source.
Run your analysis now →MCP server & REST API
When it has to run inside your own pipeline.
Patent search, landscape analysis and assignee resolution as MCP tools. Drop them into any agent framework, or call REST directly.
Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Three patterns stand out once concentration, class mix and citation data are read together: the field is technically broad but not tightly held, informatics claims are the dominant register, and the most-cited prior art is old enough that its core teachings are now baseline rather than blocking.
No single assignee controls the space
The five leading assignees hold 10.6% of all records between them, and the ranked ten only reach 16.5%. That leaves the bulk of the corpus distributed across a long tail of filers, including many single-filing entrants — a structure that rewards precise claim drafting over broad blocking positions.
Healthcare informatics is the dominant claim register
G16H claims appear in well over a third of all records, nearly double the share of the next class, G06F. Filers are increasingly framing EHR inventions as healthcare-specific informatics rather than generic data processing, which shifts where examiners and competitors look for prior art.
Volume has eased from its 2021 peak, not collapsed
Filings peaked at 1,674 in 2021 and stood at 1,545 by 2024, a measured 8% pullback rather than a downturn. Years after 2024 are still filling in due to publication lag and should not be read as a continuing decline.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to electronic health records patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
| Assignee | Co-assignee | Shared families |
|---|---|---|
| Theranos, Inc. | Theranos IP Company, LLC | 32 |
| Koninklijke Philips N.V. | Philips Intellectual Property & Standards GmbH | 21 |
| Theranos, Inc. | Labrador Diagnostics LLC | 20 |
| TEMPUS LABS INC | GEISINGER CLINIC | 16 |
| TEMPUS LABS INC | TEMPUS AI INC | 15 |
| International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) | IBM UNITED KINGDOM LTD INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY DEPARTMENT | 11 |
| International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) | IBM (China) Company Limited | 9 |
| Koninklijke Philips N.V. | PHILIPS DEUT | 6 |
Only 10 co-assignee pairs appear across the corpus, and the strongest links sit inside single corporate families — shared IP holding entities or regional subsidiaries filing jointly — rather than cross-company collaboration, suggesting little formal joint development activity in this field so far.
Who is filing, and how actively
The ranked list covers 100 companies scored by record count, not a curated top-50 or top-100 — read it as the field's most active filers rather than an exhaustive market map. Recent-year momentum figures should be read cautiously given publication lag on the newest filings.
A single leader well ahead of the field
The top-ranked assignee holds 1,341 records, more than double the fifth-place holder's 481. That gap suggests a sustained, long-running filing programme rather than a recent surge.
A steep drop-off after the top ranks
Tenth place holds 361 records, roughly a quarter of the leader's total. Below that, filing counts thin out quickly into single- and double-digit territory across the remaining ranked companies.
Recent-year counts are down across tracked filers
Every assignee with recent-year momentum data shows a year-on-year decline, several down to zero filings in the latest year. This pattern is consistent with publication lag suppressing the newest filings rather than a genuine pullback in R&D.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Hill-Rom Services, Inc. | 4 | -71% |
| CARLSMED INC | 4 | -82% |
| Dexcom, Inc. | 3 | -79% |
| ROM Technologies, Inc. | 3 | -86% |
| Koninklijke Philips N.V. | 0 | -100% |
| Cerner Innovation, Inc. | 0 | -100% |
| General Electric Company | 0 | — |
| International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to a field with a low concentration ceiling, a dominant informatics claim register, and thinning claim density in several adjacent branches. The next steps depend on whether the goal is defensive clearance or a new filing.
Map a freedom-to-operate position
Given the low concentration at the top, a freedom-to-operate check needs to look past the leading few assignees into the long tail, where single-filing entrants may still hold blocking claims in narrow sub-areas.
Run a clearance search in EurekaTest claim language against the most-cited prior art
The most-cited records date back well over a decade; drafting new claims against their language shows quickly whether a proposed invention sits on settled ground or genuinely open territory.
Compare claims in EurekaCommon questions about the Electronic Health Records patent landscape
The leading assignee in this dataset holds 1,341 records out of 34,063 in scope, well ahead of the fifth-place holder at 481. However, the top 5 assignees combined account for only 10.6% of all records, and the top 10 for 16.5%, so no single company or small group controls the field. Most of the corpus is held by a long tail of companies with far smaller counts, which means competitive mapping needs to go beyond the obvious leaders.
Filing volume rose steadily through the late 2010s and peaked in 2021 at 1,674 records, then eased to 1,545 by 2024 — an 8% decline over that span rather than a sharp drop. Numbers for 2025 and 2026 appear much lower, but that reflects publication lag of roughly 18 months rather than a genuine collapse in filing activity. The fairest read is that filing has plateaued near its 2021 peak, not that the field is shrinking.
Healthcare informatics, classified under IPC subclass G16H, appears in 37.8% of all 34,063 records, making it the single largest claim category by a wide margin. General digital data processing (G06F) follows at 20.6%, and diagnosis and surgery-related claims (A61B) at 15.6%. AI-based computing methods (G06N) currently sit at 5.9%, a smaller but notable share given how recently AI-specific claim language has entered clinical decision-support filings.
US20260066120A1, filed by Clover Health, claims a system that collects data from multiple healthcare sources including EHRs, medical imaging and patient-reported outcomes, analyses it with AI and machine learning, and presents the resulting insights through a unified interface. It is a recent filing (published March 2026) illustrating current claim style rather than a settled blocking position, since it has not yet accumulated citation history. Anyone filing in adjacent multi-source clinical decision-support territory should compare claim scope carefully against it, but it should be read as one data point among many recent similar filings rather than a singular gatekeeper.
Comparing IPC class shares shows several branches with markedly thinner claim density than the dominant G16H and G06F categories — image data processing tied to structured EHR fields (G06T, 2.9% of records) and body-fluid device data feeding into clinical workflows (A61M, 3.0%) both sit well below the core classes. These are not unclaimed, but they carry far less filing density than the informatics core, which typically means more room for a narrowly drafted claim to clear prior art. Any white-space assessment should still be paired with a targeted prior-art search in the specific sub-branch before drafting.
Research Electronic Health Records Patent Landscape in depth with Eureka
Go past this page: query the whole electronic health records patent landscape corpus yourself, in your own scope.
Every answer comes back with patent numbers you can open.
Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.