Graduate School of Technology Management, Ritsumeikan University, Ibaraki, Japan.
Department of Business Administration, Ritsumeikan University, Ibaraki, Japan.
JMIR Mhealth Uhealth. 2021 Sep 8;9(9):e31097. doi: 10.2196/31097.
Smartphones have become an integral part of our lives with unprecedented popularity and a diverse selection of apps. The continuous upgrading of information technology has also enabled smartphones to display great potential in the field of health care.
We aimed to determine the future research direction of mobile health (mHealth) by analyzing its research trends and latest research hotspots.
This study collected mHealth-related literature published between 2000 and 2020 from the Web of Science database. Descriptive statistics of publication trends of mHealth research were determined by analyzing the annual number of publications in the literature and annual number of publications by country. We constructed visualization network maps of country (or regional) collaborations and author-provided keyword co-occurrences, as well as overlay visualization maps of the average publication year of author-provided keywords to analyze the hotspots and research trends in mHealth research.
In total, 12,593 mHealth-related research papers published between 2000 and 2020 were found. The results showed an exponential growth trend in the number of annual publications in mHealth literature. JMIR mHealth and uHealth, the Journal of Medical Internet Research, and JMIR Research Protocols were the 3 top journals with respect to number of publications. The United States remained the leading contributor to the literature in this area (5294/12,593, 42.0%), well ahead of other countries and regions. Other countries and regions also showed a clear trend of annual increases in the number of mHealth publications. The 4 countries with the largest number of publications-the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia-were found to cooperate more closely. The rest of the countries and regions showed a clear geographic pattern of cooperation. The keyword co-occurrence analysis of the top 100 authors demonstrated 5 clusters, namely, development of mHealth medical technology and its application to various diseases, use of mHealth technology to improve basic public health and health policy, mHealth self-health testing and management in daily life, adolescent use of mHealth, and mHealth in mental health. The research trends revealed a gradual shift in mHealth research from health policy and improving public health care to the development and social application of mHealth technologies.
To the best of our knowledge, the most current bibliometric analysis dates back to 2016. However, the number of mHealth research published between 2017 and 2020 exceeds the previous total. The results of this study shed light on the latest hotspots and trends in mHealth research. These findings provide a useful overview of the development of the field; they may also serve as a valuable reference and provide guidance for researchers in the digital health field.
智能手机的普及程度前所未有，其功能也多种多样，已成为我们生活中不可或缺的一部分。信息技术的不断升级也使智能手机在医疗保健领域显示出巨大的潜力。
通过分析移动健康（mHealth）的研究趋势和最新研究热点，确定 mHealth 的未来研究方向。
本研究从 Web of Science 数据库中收集了 2000 年至 2020 年间发表的 mHealth 相关文献。通过分析文献的年发文量和国家的年发文量，确定 mHealth 研究的发表趋势的描述性统计数据。我们构建了国家（或地区）合作和作者提供的关键词共现的可视化网络图，以及作者提供的关键词的平均发表年的叠加可视化图，以分析 mHealth 研究的热点和研究趋势。
共发现 2000 年至 2020 年间发表的 12593 篇 mHealth 相关研究论文。结果表明，mHealth 文献的年发文量呈指数增长趋势。JMIR mHealth 和 uHealth、《医学互联网研究杂志》和 JMIR Research Protocols 是发文量最多的 3 种期刊。美国在该领域的文献贡献仍遥遥领先（5294/12593，42.0%），远高于其他国家和地区。其他国家和地区的 mHealth 出版物数量也呈现出明显的年度增长趋势。发文量最大的 4 个国家（美国、英国、加拿大和澳大利亚）之间的合作更为密切。其他国家和地区也表现出明显的合作地域模式。对前 100 位作者的关键词共现分析显示了 5 个聚类，即 mHealth 医疗技术的发展及其在各种疾病中的应用、利用 mHealth 技术改善基本公共卫生和卫生政策、mHealth 在日常生活中的自我健康检测和管理、青少年使用 mHealth 和心理健康中的 mHealth。研究趋势显示，mHealth 研究逐渐从卫生政策和改善公共卫生保健转向 mHealth 技术的开发和社会应用。
据我们所知，最新的文献计量分析可追溯到 2016 年。然而，2017 年至 2020 年间发表的 mHealth 研究数量超过了之前的总和。本研究的结果揭示了 mHealth 研究的最新热点和趋势。这些发现为 mHealth 研究的发展提供了有用的概述；它们也可能为数字健康领域的研究人员提供有价值的参考和指导。
