Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: May 2, 2020
Open Peer Review Period: Apr 25, 2020 - May 11, 2020
Date Accepted: Jan 10, 2021
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited.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.
Determining the Intellectual Structure and Academic Trends of Smart Home Healthcare Research: Bibliometric Network Analysis
ABSTRACT
Background:
With the rapid development of information and communication technologies, smart homes are being investigated as effective solutions for home health care. The increasing academic attention on smart home healthcare has primarily been on the development and application of smart home technologies. However, comprehensive studies examining the general landscape of diverse research areas for smart home healthcare are still lacking.
Objective:
This study aimed to determine the intellectual structure of smart home healthcare in a time series by conducting bibliometric network analysis. Specifically, it investigated: (1) the intellectual basis of smart home healthcare through overall academic status; (2) the intellectual foci therefor, through influential keywords and their evolutions; and (3) intellectual trends through primary topics and their evolutions.
Methods:
Analyses were conducted in five steps: (1) data retrieval from article databases (Web of Science, Scopus, and PubMed) and the initial dataset preparation of 6,080 abstracts from 2000 to 2019 first half; (2) data pre-processing and refinement extracting of 25,563 words; (3) a descriptive analysis of the overall academic status and period division (ie, 4 stages of 3-year blocks); (4) keyword and centrality analysis based on word co-occurrence networks for the intellectual foci, and (5) topic analysis for the intellectual trends based on LDA topic modelling, word-topic networks, and researcher workshops.
Results:
First, regarding the intellectual basis, the recent academic interest in smart home healthcare and predominant journals and research domains were verified. Second, to determine the intellectual foci, primary keywords were identified and classified according to the degree of their centrality values. Third, five themes pertaining to the topic evolution emerged: (1) the diversification of smart home healthcare research topics; (2) the shift from technology-oriented research to technological convergence research; (3) the expansion of application areas and system functionality of smart home healthcare; (4) the increased focus on system usability, such as service design and experiences; and (5) the recent adaptation of the latest technologies in healthcare. Based on these findings, the pattern of technology diffusion in smart home healthcare research was determined as (a) the adaptation of technologies, (b) the proliferation of application areas, and (c) the extension into system design and service experiences.
Conclusions:
The research findings provide academic and practical value in three aspects: first, they promote a comprehensive understanding of the smart home healthcare domain by identifying its multifaceted intellectual structure in a time series. Second, they can help clinicians discern the development and dispersion level of their respective disciplines. Third, the pattern of technology diffusion in smart home healthcare could help scholars comprehend current and future research trends, and identify research opportunities based on upcoming research waves of newly adapted technologies in smart home healthcare.
Citation
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.