Team Science in Precision Medicine: Study of Coleadership and Coauthorship Across Health Organizations

Abstract

Background Interdisciplinary collaborations bring lots of benefits to researchers in multiple areas, including precision medicine. Objective This viewpoint aims at studying how cross-institution team science would affect the development of precision medicine. Methods Publications of organizations on the eHealth Catalogue of Activities were collected in 2015 and 2017. The significance of the correlation between coleadership and coauthorship among different organizations was calculated using the Pearson chi-square test of independence. Other nonparametric tests examined whether organizations with coleaders publish more and better papers than organizations without coleaders. Results A total of 374 publications from 69 organizations were analyzed in 2015, and 7064 papers from 87 organizations were analyzed in 2017. Organizations with coleadership published more papers (P<.001, 2015 and 2017), which received higher citations (Z=–13.547, P<.001, 2017), compared to those without coleadership. Organizations with coleaders tended to publish papers together (P<.001, 2015 and 2017). Conclusions Our findings suggest that organizations in the field of precision medicine could greatly benefit from institutional-level team science. As a result, stronger collaboration is recommended.