Technology watch in formulation

Since the early 1980s, technology watch has become an essential working methodology in companies, institutions, and research laboratories. In 2021, it is expanding into new areas, including formulation. In this article, we will draw extensively on articles published in Techniques de l'Ingénieur dealing with technology watch. To avoid repetition, we will assume that those who wish to familiarize themselves with monitoring techniques in the field of formulation are already familiar with how it works and with the main principles and tools of technology watch. This approach allows us to focus on the essentials and present only the information that is strictly necessary for the development of formulation-specific monitoring.

As we will see later in this article, formulation monitoring is based primarily on validated information from scientific and technological sources, as well as on the detection of websites related to the subject. The main principles and aspects of the information accessible via this technique can be found in the article [R 120] . Formulation must take into account new issues, including those related to the toxicity of the products that may be used. The REACH standards are one example. It is also noteworthy that, as the field becomes increasingly important, the number of references relating to it is constantly growing. It is therefore clear that automatic information analysis techniques (patents, scientific information, and website selection) are necessary. In this context, a distinction is made between the concept of targeted and highly precise research and broad (holistic) research, which is then analyzed to determine who does what, where, and how.