Topics and Trends of Health Informatics Education Research: Scientometric Analysis.

Abstract

Background: Academic and educational institutions are making significant contributions toward training health informatics professionals. As research in health informatics education (HIE) continues to grow, it is useful to have a clearer understanding of this research field.

Objective: This study aims to comprehensively explore the research topics and trends of HIE from 2014 to 2023. Specifically, it aims to explore (1) the trends of annual articles, (2) the prolific countries/regions, institutions, and publication sources, (3) the scientific collaborations of countries/regions and institutions, and (4) the major research themes and their developmental tendencies.

Methods: Using publications in Web of Science Core Collection, a scientometric analysis of 575 articles related to the field of HIE was conducted. The structural topic model was used to identify topics discussed in the literature and to reveal the topic structure and evolutionary trends of HIE research.

Results: Research interest in HIE has clearly increased from 2014 to 2023, and is continually expanding. The United States was found to be the most prolific country in this field. Harvard University was found to be the leading institution with the highest publication productivity. Journal of Medical Internet Research, Journal of The American Medical Informatics Association, and Applied Clinical Informatics were the top 3 journals with the highest articles in this field. Countries/regions and institutions having higher levels of international collaboration were more impactful. Research on HIE could be modeled into 7 topics related to the following areas: clinical (130/575, 22.6%), mobile application (123/575, 21.4%), consumer (99/575, 17.2%), teaching (61/575, 10.6%), public health (56/575, 9.7%), discipline (55/575, 9.6%), and nursing (51/575, 8.9%). The results clearly indicate the unique foci for each year, depicting the process of development for health informatics research.

Conclusions: This is believed to be the first scientometric analysis exploring the research topics and trends in HIE. This study provides useful insights and implications, and the findings could be used as a guide for HIE contributors.