Decision support techniques in public health policy formulation: bibliometric analysis

Abstract

Decision-makers are under increasing pressure to ensure that their decisions are evidence-based, which involves overcoming major obstacles, most notably the lack of tools to make a technical choice among several options with similar weight of evidence. Objective. To perform a bibliometric analysis of the development and use of decision support techniques in the formulation of public health policies. Method. An exhaustive search was carried out in the Scopus database of original articles, review articles and book chapters published between 2012 and 2021. Bibliometric analysis techniques were applied to the results using the bibliometrix and VOSviewer applications. Results. We obtained 1,014 publications, from 431 sources, written by 4,545 authors affiliated with 160 institutions from 99 countries or regions. The average citation per document was 27.87 out of 49,681 references. Conclusions. There is a growing interest in the use of decision support techniques in the formulation of public health policies as a field of study. There is evidence of a significant increase in the number of articles on the subject studied during the study period.