BACKGROUND
Smartphones have become an integral part of our lives with their unprecedented popularity and diversification of applications. The continuous upgrading of information technology has also enabled smartphones to display great potential in the field of healthcare.
OBJECTIVE
This study aimed to clarify the future research direction of mHealth by analyzing its research trends and latest research hotspots.
METHODS
This study collected mHealth-related literature published between 2000 and 2020 from the Web of Science database. Descriptive statistics of the literature were computed using Excel software. The publication trends of mHealth research were determined by analyzing the annual number of publications in the literature and annual number of publications categorized based on different countries. Finally, this study used the VOSviewer tool to construct visualization network maps of country/region collaborations and author keyword co-occurrences, and overlay visualization maps of the average publication year of author keywords to analyze the hotspots and research trends in mHealth research.
RESULTS
In this study, 12,593 mHealth-related research articles published between 2000 and 2020 were collected. The results showed an exponential growth trend in the number of annual publications in mHealth literature. The United States remained the leading contributor to the literature in this area (5,294/12,593, 42%), well ahead of other countries/regions. Other countries/regions also showed a clear trend of annual increases in the number of publications in mHealth literature. Regarding cooperation between countries, the four 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/regions showed a clear geographical pattern of cooperation. The keyword co-occurrence analysis of the top 100 authors formed five clusters, namely: development of mHealth medical technology and its application in 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 healthcare to the development and social application of mHealth technologies.
CONCLUSIONS
To the best of our knowledge, the most current bibliometric analysis dates back to 2016. However, the number of mHealth researches published between 2017 and 2020 exceeds the previous total. Therefore, the results of this study shed light on the latest research hotspots and research 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 other researchers in the field.
Television News Coverage of Public Health Issues and Implications for Public Health Policy and Practice
