Bibliometric analysis of worldwide scientific literature in mobile - health: 2006–2016

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Abstract

Background

The advancement of mobile technology had positively influenced healthcare services. An emerging subfield of mobile technology is mobile health (m-Health) in which mobile applications are used for health purposes. The aim of this study was to analyze and assess literature published in the field of m-Health.

Methods

SciVerse Scopus was used to retrieve literature in m-Health. The study period was set from 2006 to 2016. ArcGIS 10.1 was used to present geographical distribution of publications while VOSviewer was used for data visualization. Growth of publications, citation analysis, and research productivity were presented using standard bibliometric indicators.

Results

During the study period, a total of 5465 documents were published, giving an average of 496.8 documents per year. The h-index of retrieved documents was 81. Core keywords used in literature pertaining to m-Health included diabetes mellitus, adherence, and obesity among others. Relative growth rate and doubling time of retrieved literature were stable from 2009 to 2015 indicating exponential growth of literature in this field. A total of 4638 (84.9%) documents were multi-authored with a mean collaboration index of 4.1 authors per article. The United States of America ranked first in productivity with 1926 (35.2%) published documents. India ranked sixth with 183 (3.3%) documents while China ranked seventh with 155(2.8%) documents. VA Medical Center was the most prolific organization/institution while Journal of Medical Internet Research was the preferred journal for publications in the field of m-Health. Top cited articles in the field of m-Health included the use of mobile technology in improving adherence in HIV patients, weight loss, and improving glycemic control in diabetic patients.

Conclusion

The size of literature in m-Health showed a noticeable increase in the past decade. Given the large volume of citations received in this field, it is expected that applications of m-Health will be seen into various health aspects and health services. Research in m-Health needs to be encouraged, particularly in the fight against AIDS, poor medication adherence, glycemic control in Africa and other low income world regions where technology can improve health services and decrease disease burden.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12911-017-0476-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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Most cited references 32

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mHealth for mental health: Integrating smartphone technology in behavioral healthcare.

David D Luxton, Russell McCann, Nigel E. Bush … (2011)

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Mobile Phone Based Clinical Microscopy for Global Health Applications

David N Breslauer, Robi Maamari, Neil Switz … (2009)

Light microscopy provides a simple, cost-effective, and vital method for the diagnosis and screening of hematologic and infectious diseases. In many regions of the world, however, the required equipment is either unavailable or insufficiently portable, and operators may not possess adequate training to make full use of the images obtained. Counterintuitively, these same regions are often well served by mobile phone networks, suggesting the possibility of leveraging portable, camera-enabled mobile phones for diagnostic imaging and telemedicine. Toward this end we have built a mobile phone-mounted light microscope and demonstrated its potential for clinical use by imaging P. falciparum-infected and sickle red blood cells in brightfield and M. tuberculosis-infected sputum samples in fluorescence with LED excitation. In all cases resolution exceeded that necessary to detect blood cell and microorganism morphology, and with the tuberculosis samples we took further advantage of the digitized images to demonstrate automated bacillus counting via image analysis software. We expect such a telemedicine system for global healthcare via mobile phone – offering inexpensive brightfield and fluorescence microscopy integrated with automated image analysis – to provide an important tool for disease diagnosis and screening, particularly in the developing world and rural areas where laboratory facilities are scarce but mobile phone infrastructure is extensive.

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Effect of mobile phone intervention for diabetes on glycaemic control: a meta-analysis.

X Liang, Q. Wang, X. YANG … (2011)

To assess the effect of mobile phone intervention on glycaemic control in diabetes self-management. We searched three electronic databases (PubMed, EMBASE and Cochrane Library) using the following terms: diabetes or diabetes mellitus and mobile phone or cellular phone, or text message. We also manually searched reference lists of relevant papers to identify additional studies. Clinical studies that used mobile phone intervention and reported changes in glycosylated haemoglobin (HbA(1c) ) values in patients with diabetes were reviewed. The study design, intervention methods, sample size and clinical outcomes were extracted from each trial. The results of the HbA(1c) change in the trials were pooled using meta-analysis methods. A total of 22 trials were selected for the review. Meta-analysis among 1657 participants showed that mobile phone interventions for diabetes self-management reduced HbA(1c) values by a mean of 0.5% [6 mmol/mol; 95% confidence interval, 0.3-0.7% (4-8 mmol/mol)] over a median of 6 months follow-up duration. In subgroup analysis, 11 studies among Type 2 diabetes patients reported significantly greater reduction in HbA(1c) than studies among Type 1 diabetes patients [0.8 (9 mmol/mol) vs. 0.3% (3 mmol/mol); P=0.02]. The effect of mobile phone intervention did not significantly differ by other participant characteristics or intervention strategies. Results pooled from the included trials provided strong evidence that mobile phone intervention led to statistically significant improvement in glycaemic control and self-management in diabetes care, especially for Type 2 diabetes patients. © 2011 The Authors. Diabetic Medicine © 2011 Diabetes UK.

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Author and article information

Contributors

Waleed M. Sweileh: waleedsweileh@yahoo.com

Samah W. Al-Jabi: samahjabi@yahoo.com

Adham S. AbuTaha: aabutaha@najah.edu

Sa’ed H. Zyoud: saedzyoud@yahoo.com

Fathi M. A. Anayah: f.anayah@ptuk.edu.ps

Ansam F. Sawalha: ansam@najah.edu

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): BMC Med Inform Decis Mak

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): BMC Med Inform Decis Mak

Title: BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making

Publisher: BioMed Central (London )

ISSN (Electronic): 1472-6947

Publication date (Electronic): 30 May 2017

Publication date PMC-release: 30 May 2017

Publication date Collection: 2017

Volume: 17

Electronic Location Identifier: 72

Affiliations

[1 ]ISNI 0000 0004 0631 5695, GRID grid.11942.3f, Department of Physiology, Pharmacology and Toxicology, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, , An-Najah National University, ; Nablus, Palestine

[2 ]ISNI 0000 0004 0631 5695, GRID grid.11942.3f, Department of Clinical and Community Pharmacy, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, , An-Najah National University, ; Nablus, Palestine

[3 ]ISNI 0000 0004 0485 5583, GRID grid.472344.2, College of Engineering and Technology, , Palestine Technical University-Kadoorie (PTUK), Technical University - Kadoorie, ; P.O. Box 7, Yafa Street, Tulkarm, Palestine

Article

Publisher ID: 476

DOI: 10.1186/s12911-017-0476-7

PMC ID: 5450106

PubMed ID: 28558687

SO-VID: 39a9be3a-cae4-43ce-ae7a-60d3f49c791a

License:

Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.