Biomedical-engineering research output has grown rapidly in the Nature Index. Between 2021 and 2025, the number of papers related to the field increased by 70%, a higher rate of increase than the growth of the database as a whole. This is also reflected by the subject’s proportion of all articles in the database, which rose from 2.4% to 2.7%. Within this expansion, however, the field’s research landscape has also shifted, with countries’ relative contributions reflecting changing patterns of international collaboration and research specialization.
The clearest trend is that between 2021 and 2025, biomedical-engineering research — in keeping with many other disciplines — moved decisively towards the leading nation, China. The country’s contribution to global output rose from 28.9% to 50.9%, while the field went from representing 2.8% of its total Nature Index output in 2021 to 3.5% in 2025.
The United States and Germany retained second and third place, respectively, throughout the period, but their focus on the field remained relatively static at around 2.3% to 2.5% of all output.
Here, we focus on four other countries among the leading ten in 2025 whose performance in biomedical engineering reveals more nuanced trends.
South Korea seems to have held a top-five position by developing and maintaining a strong specialization in the subject; Switzerland stands out for drawing on private-sector research and international collaboration to remain a leading European centre; Canada is one of the field’s fastest-rising countries; and the Netherlands has recorded more modest growth but retains a highly international network.
South Korea
Leading university in biomedical engineering, 2021–25: Yonsei University
Most cited paper, 2021–25: ‘Superstrong, superstiff, and conductive alginate hydrogels’ (2022)1
South Korea is an outlier among the leading nations in biomedical engineering in the Nature Index. Its research is unusually concentrated in the field, with 4.8% of its overall database output from 2021 to 2025 being in the subject, the highest percentage among the leading 25 countries. South Korea is also relatively less reliant on international collaboration compared with the three other countries featured in this article, with a little over half its papers in 2021–25 co-authored by researchers outside the country.
Nature Index 2026 Biomedical engineering
This clear specialization in biomedical engineering has helped South Korea to cement itself as one of the top-five contributors to the field, consistently ranking fourth in Share, a position that is three places higher than its overall ranking in the Nature Index. It was also the third-fastest growing nation by increase in Share in biomedical engineering between 2021 and 2025.
The country’s most cited paper in the field over the period, produced by a group from Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul and published in Nature Communications1 in 2022, explains the development of an exceptionally strong and electrically conductive seaweed-derived hydrogel. Although the paper gained almost 450 citations up to July 2026, it was not as highly cited as the top papers from the three other countries featured here. There might be multiple reasons for this, but one possible factor might be that the paper was authored solely by researchers from one institution, whereas the other research articles featured authors based in a mix of different institutions and locations.
Canada
Leading university in biomedical engineering, 2021–25: University of Toronto
Most cited paper, 2021–25: ‘A proximity-dependent biotinylation map of a human cell’ (2021)2
Canada’s Share in biomedical engineering rose by almost 60% between 2021 and 2025, making it the country with the second-largest growth in output over the period among the leading ten nations, after China. Most of Canada’s growth occurred between 2021 and 2022, when its Share rose by 51% in one year alone. Part of this rise might have been due to the addition of health-sciences journals to the database in 2022. However, these new journals grew the Nature Index overall by 13%, suggesting that Canada still excelled that year in biomedical engineering.
Unlike South Korea, however, Canada’s growth is unlikely to be related to heavy specialization: biomedical engineering was a relatively small focus of Canada’s entire output in the Nature Index, at about 2.3% of overall Share from 2021 to 2025.
Canada’s broader growth coincides with a major funding push in the life sciences that was designed to address a decline in the country’s research and biomanufacturing capacity. The decline was identified by the federal government as a reason why it was unable to produce its own COVID-19 vaccine. The government’s 2021 budget allocated Can$2.2 billion (US$1.6 billion) to a Biomanufacturing and Life Science Strategy, with money going to a mix of life-sciences and biomanufacturing companies, research institutes and universities over seven years.
Canada’s most-cited biomedical-engineering paper2 in the Nature Index from 2021 to 2025 was produced by researchers based at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute in Ontario, the University of Toronto and McGill University, in Montreal. Published in Nature in 2021, the researchers showed how they constructed a detailed map of a human cell by placing molecular labels throughout the cell.
Switzerland
Leading university in biomedical engineering, 2021–25: Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich
Most cited paper, 2021–25: ‘Tissue geometry drives deterministic organoid patterning’ (2022)3
Switzerland’s biomedical-engineering Share rose from 41.5 to 49.2 between 2021 and 2025, a gain of 19%. Although its growth was modest, contributions from private-sector research have arguably helped Switzerland to maintain a spot in the top 10 each year.
From 2021 to 2025, corporate organizations were responsible for 7.2% of the country’s biomedical engineering output in the Nature Index, the highest proportion among the leading ten nations. This fits a wider pattern: Switzerland’s gross domestic expenditure on R&D stood at 3.2% of GDP in 2023, with business sector R&D alone accounting for 2.2%, well above the EU average of 1.5% — although still below South Korea’s 3.9% — according to Eurostat.