Wearable Infusion Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- 90.8% concentration. The top five assignees hold 494 of the 544 records in scope — this field is not open ground, it is occupied ground with one dominant filer.
- Filing has plateaued, not grown. Annual filings sat flat at 28 in both 2021 and 2024, a 0% span after the 2019 peak of 58 — the surge already happened.
- A61M dominates, G16H is the fast-follower. 89.5% of records sit in body-fluid device claims, but 17.6% now also touch healthcare informatics — software and connectivity claims are layering onto hardware claims.
Filing growth compares 2021 (28 records) with 2024 (28) — 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 544 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
Wearable infusion pumps and on-body injectors sit at the intersection of mechanical drug delivery and connected-device engineering. The search scope here pairs core device terms — wearable infusion pump and on-body injector — with the functional claims that decide whether a device actually works on a patient’s body: viscous formulation handling, needle insertion mechanics, adhesive patch wear, occlusion feedback, delivery accuracy and user handling. That combination narrows a broad device category down to the claims that matter for insulin pumps, biologics injectors and other body-worn delivery systems.
544 published records fall inside this scope across the 2015-01-01 to 2026-07-31 window. Publication trails filing by roughly 18 months, so the 2025 and 2026 counts in the trend chart will keep rising as later filings publish — treat the most recent two years as a floor, not a final figure.
Filing trend and technology mix
Two views of the same 544-record set: the year-by-year filing count, and the IPC subclasses those filings claim into. Neither view is redundant — a flat filing trend can still hide a shift in what is being claimed.
Filings plateaued after the 2019 peak
Annual filings ran from 6 in 2017 up to a peak of 58 in 2019, then settled to a flat span of 28 in 2021 and 28 again in 2024 — a 0% change across that three-year window. The 2025-2026 counts will revise upward as publication catches up; they should not be read as a decline.
Device claims dominate; informatics is the second layer
A61M (devices for body fluids) covers 89.5% of the 544 records, confirming this is fundamentally a mechanical and fluidic device category. G16H (healthcare informatics) at 17.6% and G06F (digital data processing) at 5.5% show a smaller but real second wave of claims around dosing software, connectivity and data handling layered on top of the hardware.
Shares are the percentage of the 544 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Wearable Infusion and On-Body Injectors with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about wearable infusion and on-body injectors and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaA representative claim in the wearable-pump space
User-wearable infusion pump holder
Embodiments of the present disclosure relate to a holder or carrier for a user-wearable infusion pump that can be worn on or near the patient's body. Embodiments depicted and described herein provide a more versatile and secure way to hold and carry a user-wearable infusion pump.Filed by Tandem Diabetes Care — the claim sits in the mechanical carrier/holder space rather than the pump's fluidic core, which is where a large share of the top-five assignees' claims concentrate.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US7981102B2 | Removable controller for an infusion pump | 754 |
| 2 | US20110190694A1 | Infusion pump assembly | 356 |
| 3 | US20090069787A1 | Activity Sensing Techniques for an Infusion Pump System | 324 |
| 4 | US20080294094A1 | Occlusion Sensing for an Infusion Pump | 294 |
| 5 | US20080294142A1 | Removable Controller for an Infusion Pump | 237 |
| 6 | US20090275896A1 | Infusion pump assembly | 220 |
| 7 | US20150173674A1 | Detecting and communicating health conditions | 217 |
| 8 | US7828528B2 | Occlusion sensing system for infusion pumps | 206 |
| 9 | US20090069745A1 | Operating an Infusion Pump System | 201 |
| 10 | US20120203177A1 | Infusion pump assembly | 197 |
Citation counts favour older, earlier-published records inside this corpus — read them as a signal of influence on later filings, not as a ranking of current relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Three figures from this dataset change how a freedom-to-operate review or a new filing strategy in this space should be framed.
The field has one dominant filer, not five equal competitors
Top-five combined share is 494 of 544 records, but the leader alone accounts for 258 — roughly half the entire dataset. Any freedom-to-operate check in this space starts with that single assignee's portfolio, not a broad market scan.
The growth phase is behind this technology, not ahead of it
Filings peaked at 58 in 2019 and have since settled to a flat plateau — 28 in 2021, 28 again in 2024. That is a mature, occupied claim space rather than an emerging one; new entrants are filing into dense prior art, not open ground.
Informatics claims are riding on top of hardware claims
Nearly nine in ten records claim into A61M device mechanics, but a growing minority — 96 of 544 records — also claim healthcare informatics elements like dosing logic or connectivity. That overlap is where freshly defensible claim territory still exists.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to wearable infusion and on-body injectors, with the prior art for and against each one.
| Assignee | Co-assignee | Shared families |
|---|---|---|
| KAMEN DEAN | LANIGAN RICHARD J | 22 |
| KAMEN DEAN | KERWIN JOHN MATTHEW | 13 |
| KAMEN DEAN | GRAY LARRY BRIAN | 13 |
| KAMEN DEAN | FICHERA STEPHEN L | 13 |
| LANIGAN RICHARD J | FICHERA STEPHEN L | 13 |
| KAMEN DEAN | GRAY LARRY B | 11 |
| DEKA Products LP | KAMEN DEAN | 10 |
| KAMEN DEAN | KERWIN JOHN M | 9 |
The strongest co-assignee pairings in this dataset are individual inventors named alongside a corporate assignee, not two companies co-filing — a reminder that inventor-assignee structures still shape a meaningful share of this portfolio.
Who holds the claim space
53 companies appear in the assignee ranking behind these 544 records. The distribution is steep: one leader, a short second tier, then a long tail of single- or few-filing entrants.
One assignee holds nearly half the dataset
The leading assignee's 258 records is close to half of all 544 records in scope, well ahead of the fifth-placed company's 21. Any new filer needs to map this single portfolio in detail before choosing where to claim.
A mid-tier cluster with real but modest share
From second through fifth place, filings drop off steeply before levelling into a mid-tier band. Position five holds 21 records — still enough to represent a defensible, if narrower, claim position.
Almost nothing remains outside the top ten
Top ten assignees combined hold 539 of 544 records. The remaining 43 ranked companies share the last handful of records between them, which makes this a landscape of incumbents rather than a fragmented emerging field.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Tandem Diabetes Care | 3 | -70% |
| Amgen Inc | 2 | — |
| DEKA Products LP | 0 | -100% |
| M2 MEDICAL GROUP HOLDINGS INC | 0 | — |
| ASANTE SOLUTIONS INC | 0 | — |
| Bigfoot Biomedical Inc | 0 | — |
| KAMEN DEAN | 0 | — |
| LANIGAN RICHARD J | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
This landscape frames where the claim space is dense and where it is thinner. The next step is usually specific to a company's own pipeline or a particular sub-claim.
Run a freedom-to-operate check against the leader
With one assignee holding 258 of 544 records, a targeted FTO review of that single portfolio will surface more risk than a broad competitor scan.
Explore with Patsnap EurekaTrack the informatics overlap as it grows
The 17.6% share of records now touching healthcare informatics is the fastest-moving overlap in this dataset and worth monitoring quarter to quarter.
Set up monitoring in Patsnap EurekaCommon questions about this landscape
One assignee leads decisively with 258 of the 544 records in scope, close to half the entire dataset. The next four companies together bring the top-five combined total to 494 records, or 90.8% of all records in scope. Beyond fifth place, the remaining 43 ranked companies in the assignee ranking hold small, often single-digit counts, making this a field of one clear incumbent plus a shallow second tier rather than several evenly matched competitors.
Filing volume peaked in 2019 at 58 records and has since flattened rather than continued climbing. Comparing complete years, 2021 and 2024 both recorded 28 filings, a 0% change over that three-year span, which points to a mature and heavily claimed technology rather than an emerging one. The 2025 and 2026 counts in the trend data will still rise somewhat as later filings publish, since publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, but that catch-up is not the same as renewed growth.
The overwhelming majority, 89.5% of the 544 records, claim into A61M, the IPC subclass covering devices for administering body fluids — confirming this is primarily a mechanical and fluidic device category. A meaningful secondary cluster, 17.6% of records, also claims healthcare informatics elements under G16H, covering things like dosing software and connectivity. Smaller but notable shares touch flow and volume measurement, non-electric control systems, and antenna design for body-worn telemetry, reflecting the multi-disciplinary nature of a connected wearable device.
The under-claimed branches sit away from the core fluidic device claims that the leading assignee already dominates. Sub-areas like occlusion feedback algorithms, viscous formulation flow sensing, adhesive patch wear-time extension, and antenna integration for body-worn telemetry show up at lower density in this 544-record scope, meaning fewer prior filings compete directly for that claim language. A first claim in these areas is more likely to clear a novelty search cleanly than one written against core pump mechanics, where the top assignees already hold dense, overlapping claim sets.
US20230173170A1, filed by Tandem Diabetes Care, claims a holder or carrier for a user-wearable infusion pump designed to be worn on or near the patient's body. It sits in the mechanical accessory space around the pump rather than in the pump's fluidic or electronic core, which matters because it shows that even secondary components like carriers and mounts are actively being claimed in this field. Anyone designing a wearable pump accessory should check this filing specifically, since it is a recent, named example of exactly that claim type from one of the field's top-five assignees.
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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.