ICT Application and Use in Health Sciences Research at the Global Level: A Scientometric Study

Abstract

The growing use of information and communication technology has now expanded to health professionals in practice. This study aimed to highlight the current status of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) use in health sciences as reported in journal papers between 2002 and 2021. This paper presents the annual trends, top institutes and countries, citations, h-index, keywords distribution, and top authors in this research domain. The data were extracted from the Web of Science database, and R studio and Bibexcel tools were used for analysis. The study analyzed a total of 140 documents published over a span of two decades. Health Care Sciences Services (34) and Computer Science published the most health science articles (29). The USA (19) was the most productive country, followed by England (16) and the Netherlands (15). Berg M was the most productive author, with 36 articles. The results show that institutions such as Erasmus University and Duke University have published numerous articles on the topic, encouraged by specific R&D funding schemes, and made a significant contribution to the development of health sciences research. The findings of this study offer valuable information about international initiatives and projects relevant to the advancement of ICT in health science research, which may be utilized to pinpoint potential future study topics such as artificial intelligence development.