Research on Digital Technology Use in Cardiology: Bibliometric Analysis (Preprint)

Abstract

BACKGROUND Digital technology uses in cardiology have become a popular research focus in recent years. However, there has been no published bibliometric report that analyzed the corresponding academic literature in order to derive key publishing trends and characteristics of this scientific area. OBJECTIVE We used a bibliometric approach to identify and analyze the academic literature on digital technology uses in cardiology, and to unveil popular research topics, key authors, institutions, countries, and journals. We further captured the cardiovascular conditions and diagnostic tools most commonly investigated within this field. METHODS The Web of Science electronic database was queried to identify relevant papers on digital technology uses in cardiology. Publication and citation data were acquired directly from the database. Complete bibliographic data were exported to VOSviewer, a dedicated bibliometric software package, and related to the semantic content of titles, abstracts, and keywords. A term map was constructed for findings visualization. RESULTS The analysis was based on data from 12,529 papers. Of the top 5 most productive institutions, 4 were based in the United States. The United States was the most productive country (4224/12,529, 33.7%), followed by United Kingdom (1136/12,529, 9.1%), Germany (1067/12,529, 8.5%), China (682/12,529, 5.4%), and Italy (622/12,529, 5.0%). Cardiovascular diseases that had been frequently investigated included hypertension (152/12,529, 1.2%), atrial fibrillation (122/12,529, 1.0%), atherosclerosis (116/12,529, 0.9%), heart failure (106/12,529, 0.8%), and arterial stiffness (80/12,529, 0.6%). Recurring modalities were electrocardiography (170/12,529, 1.4%), angiography (127/12,529, 1.0%), echocardiography (127/12,529, 1.0%), digital subtraction angiography (111/12,529, 0.9%), and photoplethysmography (80/12,529, 0.6%). For a literature subset on smartphone apps and wearable devices, the Journal of Medical Internet Research (20/632, 3.2%) and other JMIR portfolio journals (51/632, 8.0%) were the major publishing venues. CONCLUSIONS Digital technology uses in cardiology target physicians, patients, and the general public. Their functions range from assisting diagnosis, recording cardiovascular parameters, and patient education, to teaching laypersons about cardiopulmonary resuscitation. This field already has had a great impact in health care, and we anticipate continued growth.

Insight into global research on health literacy and heart diseases: A bibliometric analysis

“…Of these, the United States made the largest contribution to this field, accounting for over 50% of the studies. Previous bibliometric research related to cardiac diseases also showed similar results, with the United States emerging as the most prolific country in research quantity (34,35).…”

“…We included the three most popular published databases: PubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus. Therefore, our results are more inclusive as compared to prior studies, which focused on only one of the aforementioned databases (34,35,46). To our knowledge, this is the first study to provide a comprehensive picture of the HL tools used in observational and interventional studies related to heart diseases.…”