JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Many academic and educational institutions are making significant contributions towards training health informatics professionals by offering educational programs or courses in the field. As research in health informatics education continues to grow, it is useful to have a clearer understanding of its status, trends, and topics across the research field.

Objective:

This study aims to comprehensively explore the research topics and trends of health informatics education during a decade from 2014 to 2023. Specifically, to explore (1) the trends of annual articles, (2) the prolific countries/regions, institutions and publication sources, (3) the scientific collaborations of countries/regions and institutions, and (4) the major research themes and their developmental tendencies.

Methods:

Using publications in Web of Science core collection, a bibliometric analysis of 575 articles related to the field of health informatics education was conducted. The Structural Topic Model was used to identify topics discussed in the literature and to reveal the topic structure and evolutionary trends of health informatics education research. Scientific collaborations among countries/regions and institutions were explored by social network analysis using VOSviewer, which generated collaborative networks by representing countries/regions and institutions as nodes, and the collaborative relationships were reflected using lines.

Results:

Research interest in health informatics education has clearly increased from 2014 to 2023, and is continually expanding. USA is the most prolific country in this field. Harvard University is the leading institution with the highest publication productivity. Journal of Medical Internet Research is the top journals with the highest articles in this field. Countries/Regions and institutions that have higher levels of international collaboration are more impactful. Research of health informatics education can be modeled into 7 topics relevant for clinical informatics education (22.7%), mobile application in health education & healthcare (21.5%), consumer health informatics education (17.18%), professional teaching of biomedical and health informatics (10.62%), public health informatics education & digital health (9.63%), discipline of biomedical and health informatics (9.56%) and nursing informatics education (8.8%). The results clearly indicate the unique foci for each year, depicting the process of development for health informatics education. Moreover, the most representative research works for each topic are discussed, and an emerging study issues about artificial intelligence in health informatics education are highlighted.

Conclusions:

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first bibliometric analysis exploring the research topics and trends in health informatics education. This study provided valuable insights and implications, and could be used as a guide for contributors to health informatics education.