Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Feb 27, 2020
Date Accepted: Apr 16, 2020
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
A bibliometric and text mining analysis of the publications using Taiwan’s National Health Insurance claims data
ABSTRACT
Background:
Taiwan’s National Health Insurance (NHI) claims database has been widely used for clinical and health services research. However, its use, and perhaps misuse, has incurred criticism and even litigation.
Objective:
This study updates the bibliometric profile of the literature using NHI claims data.
Methods:
PubMed was used to locate publications based on NHI claims data between 1996 and 2017. Natural language processing was employed to mine research topics from article titles. Research trends were analyzed from various aspects, including publication amount, journals, research topics and types, and cooperation between authors. This study also explored the role of open access journals.
Results:
A total of 4473 articles were identified. A rapid growth of publications has been witnessed from 2000 to 2015, followed by a plateau thereafter. Diabetes, stroke and dementia were the top three most popular research topics whereas statin therapy, metformin and Chinese herbal medicine were the most investigated interventions. Approximately one third of the articles were published in open access journals. Studies with two or more medical conditions, but without any intervention, were the most common study type. Studies of this type tended to be contributed by prolific authors and published in open access mega journals.
Conclusions:
This study addressed some controversial phenomena of the research using NHI claims data and attempted to discuss the underlying reasons. Future directions for improving the impact of research based on NHI claims data were proposed. The analysis of secondary data may still have its place in the production of scientific knowledge to inform medical decisions and policy making.
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