How Can Patent Insights Strengthen Occupational Health and Safety?

Building on WIPO’s recent Patent Landscape Report on Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) technologies, deep-dive studies have been conducted for Cameroon, The Gambia, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and Tunisia, highlighting key risks in high-hazard sectors and mapping relevant patent-backed solutions across prediction, detection, and protection technologies. The synthesis underscores opportunities for countries to strengthen preventive safety practices through evidence-based insights and emerging OHS innovations.

As part of the WIPO Development Agenda Project on “Reducing Work-related Accidents and Occupational Diseases through Innovation and Intellectual Property”, the WIPO Patent Landscape Report on Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) technologies mapped more than 450,000 patent families globally across prediction, detection and protection technologies. Newly published deep-dive analysis looks further into how these innovations translate into real risks and real workplaces, with four standalone deep-dive reports focusing on the high-risk sectors of Cameroon, The Gambia, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and Tunisia, developed through close collaboration with national experts and targeted scoping studies. Though the countries differ in size, industrial structure, and data availability, a clear message emerges across all four analyses: preventing occupational injuries requires both proven protective equipment and emerging predictive technologies, and patent data offers a unique lens to navigate that shift.

With a significant share of the labor force concentrated in high-risk, manual, and industrial sectors like construction, mining, agriculture, textiles, and manufacturing, these four countries have an increased risk of exposure to falls, machinery, electricity, dust and repetitive strain than in more service-based economies. As a result, fatal incidents and long-term occupational health impacts can occur at higher rates. In this blog, the key findings from these four deep-dive country mappings illustrates how evidence-based IP analytics can help countries reduce workplace fatalities, improve compliance, and support more resilient labor systems.

Connecting global patent trends to country-level priorities

The WIPO Patent Landscape Report on Occupational Health and Safety showed that innovation in workplace safety is unevenly distributed. Roughly 62% of global OHS patents relate to protection, 35% to detection, and only 3% to prediction, the newest category enabled by AI, IoT, and advanced analytics. Major patenting activity continues to come from a handful of innovation hubs: the United States, China, the Republic of Korea, Japan, and Europe.

Yet achieving safe workplaces requires more than knowing where innovation comes from. It requires knowing which hazards matter locally, which solutions are most relevant, and where opportunities exist for adaptation and technology transfer.

Across the four beneficiary countries studied as part of this WIPO Development Agenda project, each deep dive mapping focuses on the sectors where national experts identified the highest concentration of workplace accidents and serious health risks. Together, these sectors identified revealed a common pattern – the most hazardous industries are also those where patent-backed safety innovations can deliver the greatest impact. The four deep-dive country mappings therefore focus not on patent volumes but on sector-specific accident patterns, priority risk types, and concrete, patent-backed solutions. Across the construction, mining, agriculture, manufacturing, and textile sectors examined, several common patterns emerge, as shown in the summaries below.

• Figure 1. Cameroon – high-risk sector overview
• Figure 2. The Gambia – high-risk sector overview
• Figure 3. Islamic Republic of Iran – high-risk sector overview
• Figure 4. Tunisia – high-risk sector overview

Construction: The growing role of smart safety systems

Construction is consistently the most dangerous sector in all four countries studied. This reflects wider global trends, since falls from heights, electrocution, and machinery-related incidents account for over 60% of construction fatalities worldwide, and the sector alone represents nearly one-fifth of workplace deaths. IP analytics helps to illustrate where solutions exist today. Our research shows that:

1. Most patent activity linked to construction focuses on reactive safety measures, helmets, harnesses, fall-arrest systems, machine guards, and energy-absorbing materials. These remain essential in high-risk environments where hazards cannot be fully eliminated;
2. Wearable sensors capable of monitoring electrical fields, fall-risk motion, proximity to moving machinery, or hazardous environmental conditions show increased activity in filings. These tools enable supervisors to recognize risks earlier, track compliance, and receive alerts in real time;
3. Although still underrepresented globally, predictive solutions – such as AI-enabled fall-risk modelling, electrocution early-warning systems, and smart lifelines that monitor strain and usage – are beginning to emerge;
4. Across the four deep-dive reports, solutions related to falls (smart lifelines), electrocution (wearable field-detection devices), and machinery injuries (automated shut-off systems) are consistently highlighted as actionable, practical avenues for improving safety outcomes.

While construction dominates fatality rates, industrial sectors such as manufacturing, textiles, and mining reveal a different risk profile, one characterized by machinery accidents, long-term musculoskeletal disorders, and exposure to dust, chemicals, heat, and noise.

Manufacturing: machinery injuries and long-term musculoskeletal disorders

In manufacturing, acute injuries often result from unguarded machinery, manual handling tasks, and repetitive motions. Patent trends show that:

• Protection technologies dominate (up to 88% of all filings in some sectors), including machine guarding, protective fabrics, and noise-reducing materials;
• Detection systems such as vibration monitors, chemical exposure sensors, or ergonomic posture-tracking wearables are steadily increasing;
• Prediction technologies, though limited, include early-warning systems for repetitive-strain risks or predictive maintenance models for machinery.

The relevance to partner countries is clear: better guarding, ergonomic equipment, and sensor-driven monitoring could significantly reduce non-fatal yet productivity-limiting conditions.

Mining: collapses, crush injuries, and gas exposures

Mining remains one of the most hazardous sectors worldwide and for the countries examined. Patent activity in mining is relatively small compared to construction or manufacturing, but particularly rich in detection and monitoring:

• Gas-leak detectors;
• Ground-stability radar;
• Proximity-detection systems to prevent vehicle–worker collisions;
• Smart respirators and ventilation monitoring;
• Predictive systems assessing geological or structural instability.

These technologies offer pathways toward reducing catastrophic accidents such as collapses, explosions, and crushing incidents, risks reflected across several of the deep-dive assessments.

Agriculture: machinery rollovers, chemical exposure, and the need for both basic and digital safety solutions

Agriculture appears in multiple country studies and shows a dual safety challenge; machinery-related incidents – such as rollovers, collisions, entanglement injuries – as well as chronic exposure risks, dust, pesticides, heat, and ergonomic strain. Patent trends indicate that global innovation in agricultural OHS focuses on:

• Rollover protection structures (ROPS);
• Machine shielding and automated shut-off systems;
• IoT-enabled machine monitoring;
• Wearable environmental sensors.

Here too, the combination of basic safety measures and connected technologies is essential. For many partner countries, strengthening availability of protective equipment remains a first step, but opportunities exist to scale low-cost detection tools and predictive maintenance systems.

A shared path forward: the importance of moving from reactive to preventive safety

Across the deep-dive studies, three cross-cutting insights emerge.Most patent activity remains reactive, but prevention is the frontier: Globally and across sectors, protection patents dominate. They remain critical, especially where regulation, training, or equipment availability is limited. However, the growth of detection and prediction technologies signals a shift toward preventive OHS. The countries studied have limited access to these solutions today, representing an opportunity for targeted adoption or local adaptation.

Data availability and reporting systems shape safety outcomes: All four reports highlight challenges with consistent accident reporting, which affect both national policymaking and employer-level prevention strategies. IP analytics cannot replace national occupational data, but they help countries identify which technologies are available globally, which risks those technologies address, and where protection gaps may be widest

Capacity building and technology transfer are essential: The studies show significant potential for technology transfer because many patent families in advanced OHS technologies do not have protection in Africa or parts of the Middle East. This opens a pathway for local adaptation, domestic innovation efforts, partnerships with international technology providers, and development of new standards or certification schemes. These opportunities align with the broader goals of WIPO’s development-oriented IP analytics work: helping countries use IP data to support safer, more productive workplaces.

Looking ahead: how countries can use IP analytics for safer workplaces

The four newly published deep-dive OHS patent analyses focusing on the high-risk sectors of Cameroon, The Gambia, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and Tunisia brings the global patent landscape closer to national decision-making. By connecting innovation data to concrete hazards in construction, agriculture, mining, manufacturing, and textiles, the four studies illustrate how IP analytics can support evidence-based policymaking, guide investment in safety technologies, and ultimately protect the workers who sustain economic growth.

As countries strengthen their approaches to occupational health and safety, patent data will remain a valuable resource for identifying emerging technologies, supporting regulatory reforms, and accelerating the shift from reactive responses to preventive, innovation-driven safety cultures.