The Third Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, China.
School of Life Sciences, Central South University, Changsha, China.
J Med Internet Res. 2021 Sep 9;23(9):e21974. doi: 10.2196/21974.
Consumer health informatics (CHI) originated in the 1990s. With the rapid development of computer and information technology for health decision making, an increasing number of consumers have obtained health-related information through the internet, and CHI has also attracted the attention of an increasing number of scholars.
The aim of this study was to analyze the research themes and evolution characteristics of different study periods and to discuss the dynamic evolution path and research theme rules in a time-series framework from the perspective of a strategy map and a data flow in CHI.
The Web of Science core collection database of the Institute for Scientific Information was used as the data source to retrieve relevant articles in the field of CHI. SciMAT was used to preprocess the literature data and construct the overlapping map, evolution map, strategic diagram, and cluster network characterized by keywords. Besides, a bibliometric analysis of the general characteristics, the evolutionary characteristics of the theme, and the evolutionary path of the theme was conducted.
A total of 986 articles were obtained after the retrieval, and 931 articles met the document-type requirement. In the past 21 years, the number of articles increased every year, with a remarkable growth after 2015. The research content in 4 different study periods formed the following 38 themes: patient education, medicine, needs, and bibliographic database in the 1999-2003 study period; world wide web, patient education, eHealth, patients, medication, terminology, behavior, technology, and disease in the 2004-2008 study period; websites, information seeking, physicians, attitudes, technology, risk, food labeling, patient, strategies, patient education, and eHealth in the 2009-2014 study period; and electronic medical records, health information seeking, attitudes, health communication, breast cancer, health literacy, technology, natural language processing, user-centered design, pharmacy, academic libraries, costs, internet utilization, and online health information in the 2015-2019 study period. Besides, these themes formed 10 evolution paths in 3 research directions: patient education and intervention, consumer demand attitude and behavior, and internet information technology application.
Averaging 93 publications every year since 2015, CHI research is in a rapid growth period. The research themes mainly focus on patient education, health information needs, health information search behavior, health behavior intervention, health literacy, health information technology, eHealth, and other aspects. Patient education and intervention research, consumer demand, attitude, and behavior research comprise the main theme evolution path, whose evolution process has been relatively stable. This evolution path will continue to become the research hotspot in this field. Research on the internet and information technology application is a secondary theme evolution path with development potential.
消费者健康信息学（CHI）起源于 20 世纪 90 年代。随着计算机和信息技术在卫生决策中的快速发展，越来越多的消费者通过互联网获取健康相关信息，CHI 也引起了越来越多学者的关注。
本研究旨在分析不同研究时期的研究主题和演变特征，并从战略图和时间序列框架中的数据流的角度讨论 CHI 中的动态演变路径和研究主题规则。
本研究以科学信息研究所的 Web of Science 核心集合数据库为数据源，检索 CHI 领域的相关文章。SciMAT 用于预处理文献数据并构建以关键词为特征的重叠图、演变图、战略图和聚类网络。此外，还对一般特征、主题的进化特征和主题的进化路径进行了文献计量分析。
检索后共获得 986 篇文章，其中 931 篇符合文献类型要求。在过去的 21 年中，每年的文章数量都在增加，2015 年后增长显著。4 个不同研究时期的研究内容形成了以下 38 个主题：1999-2003 年研究期的患者教育、医学、需求和文献数据库；2004-2008 年研究期的万维网、患者教育、电子健康、患者、药物、术语、行为、技术和疾病；2009-2014 年研究期的网站、信息搜索、医生、态度、技术、风险、食品标签、患者、策略、患者教育和电子健康；2015-2019 年研究期的电子病历、健康信息搜索、态度、健康传播、乳腺癌、健康素养、技术、自然语言处理、以用户为中心的设计、药房、学术图书馆、成本、互联网利用和在线健康信息。此外，这些主题在 3 个研究方向上形成了 10 条进化路径：患者教育和干预、消费者需求、态度和行为以及互联网信息技术应用。
自 2015 年以来，每年平均有 93 篇出版物，CHI 研究处于快速增长期。研究主题主要集中在患者教育、健康信息需求、健康信息搜索行为、健康行为干预、健康素养、健康信息技术、电子健康等方面。患者教育和干预研究、消费者需求、态度和行为研究构成了主要的主题演变路径，其演变过程相对稳定。这一演变路径将继续成为该领域的研究热点。互联网和信息技术应用研究是具有发展潜力的次要主题演变路径。
