Global Trends in eHealth Research: Analysis and Visualization of Author and Indexer-Supplied Keywords

This article examined the growth and development of ehealth research based on the headcount and analysis of the characteristics of keywords used by authors and indexers to represent their research content during 1945-2019 as indexed in the Elseviers Scopus database. The results show that although the term ehealth originated in the late 1990s, but it has become an envelope term for much older terms such as telemedicine, and its variants which originated much earlier. The keywords were spread in 27 Scopus Subject Areas, with medicine (44.04%), engineering (12.84%) and computer science (11.47%) leading while by Scopus All Science Journal Classification, Health Sciences accounted for 55.83% of the keywords and physical sciences followed with 30.62%. The rest two classifications namely social sciences and life sciences made only single digit contributions. Although the primary essence of ehealth was how to meet health needs, the work of engineers who either initially deployed telephone to meet their health needs or, and, computer scientists, who addressed the need to design technologies for medical services is very significant. It is concluded that ehealth is a multidisciplinary area that is attractive to researchers from all disciplines because of its sensitive focus on health, and therefore requires pooling and integrating of resources and expertise, methods and approaches.