1. Background

Advances in information and communication technology (ICT) and the dissemination of network data processing created a new environment of universal access to information and globalization of communications, businesses, and services. In the health sector, a variety of new ICTs are implemented to improve the efficiency of all levels of healthcare. E-health—or digital health—is the use of ICT to improve the ability to treat patients, facilitate behavior change, and improve health. Many benefits of E-health have been presented, including cost reduction and convenience for users [1, 2], reduction of health service costs and improving health service quality [3, 4], reaching isolated or stigmatized groups, timeliness of access to the Internet [5], increasing user and supplier control of the E-health intervention [6], and changing government policy making [1]. E-health is making healthcare more efficient while allowing patients and professionals to access and manage data in ways that were previously impossible [7]. Thus, E-health does not specifically refer

to a certain subject. It is an application area where many subjects are associated such as clinical informatics, health informatics, electronic health record, consumer health informatics, and various Internet-based technologies and services [8].

think, E-health application is cost-effective and efficient and will improve qualities of clinical work [23–25]. The academic literature has primarily focused on issues in the adoption and diffusion of specific E-health technologies, and only a few papers concern on the development of E-health subject [26]. This leads to the current state that although some literature reviews cover one part or the other of the field [27, 28], an overall picture is still missing which is possibly due to the field's constant evolution. Besides, coherence of these researches is poor, and the interaction between scholars is not enough, making it difficult to reach a consensus about

Detection and Characterization of E-Health Research: A Bibliometrics (2001–2016)

We explore the law of E-health discipline development using the scientific metrology, social network analysis, and information visualization technology. Progressively synthesized co-citation networks are constructed and visualized to aid visual analytic studies of the domain's structural and dynamic patterns and trends [29]. The formation of E-health, hot topics evolution, and trend of this research

This study aims to present an analytical review on the state of E-health research.

Web of Science core collection is used as data sources. We summarized the scope of E-health, and developed the following search query according to the results of literature research (Table 1). We selected the search term to retrieve all relevant

> TS = (Medical research using grids) OR TS = (healthcare information systems)

#2 TS = (Clinical Informatics) AND #1 2209

#4 TS = (CONSUMER HEALTH INFORMATICS) 409

#7 TS = cyber medicine 26

#9 TI = health and (big data) 283 #10 TS = health and (big data) 3558

Search query Number

of hits

23,184

18,034

17,993

206,209

9484

literatures for 15 years, and 6371 documents were retrieved in total.

WOS #1 TS = (Clinical decision support system) OR TS = (Health informatics) OR

#3 TS = ((electronic health record) or EHR or cpoe or (computerized physician order entry) or e-prescribing)

#5 TS = ((health knowledge management) or (decision aids for patients) or (virtual healthcare teams))

#6 TS = (telemedicine or mhealth or m-health or wireless networks or (vr technology) or cloud-computing or (self-monitoring healthcare devices) or (health surveillance systems) or (e-mental health))

#8 TI = (ehealth or (e-health) or (E-Health) or EHealth or EHEALTH or E-HEALTH or (electronic health))

A review framework composed of multiple research methods is developed and applied to yield a broad coverage of E-health research. We explore the distribution of E-health hot topics and probe the research frontier by bibliometric methods. The evolution of different topics is evaluated and some research directions are proposed.

E-health research.

field being explored is achieved.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.88610

2. Methods and tools

2.1 Data source

69

According to Faber, Mitchell coined the term E-health in 1999 [9]. The study of E-health has attracted research interest after it was used by the World Health Organization (WHO) [10]. First, some researchers raise the theory that E-health communication may have immense potential to promote behavior changes through unique features such as mass customization, interactivity, and convenience. As a result, it can help improve the quality of medical care and lower the cost [11, 12]. On the basis of these theories, many researches have been conducted to confirm the advantages and benefits of E-health, such as "automatic-sleep classification program" research and "E-health intervention model designing" [13, 14], challenges in establishing a national databank of anonymized person-based records, and randomized controlled trial of web-guided approach [15–17]. Published articles in related fields are on the rise year by year (Figure 1), and many countries have also raised programs, Europe "e-Health Action Plan 2004–2010" and "e-Health Action Plan 2012–2020" and the USA "Federal Health IT Strategic Plan (2015–2020)," on the development of health information systems. The United Kingdom "Health and Social Care Act 2012" proposed that we need to reform healthcare and take the advantage of information technologies to improve the quality of patient care [18–20]. It informs us that combining health work with ICT is the trend of medicine development since medicine and health are the basis of stable development for a country.

As for E-health researches, there are several main topics: (1) Consensus and standardization of E-health research. (2) Evaluation methods and challenges proper evaluation methods are needed to establish E-health quality and efficiency evaluation model [21, 22]. (3) Quality, value, and future trends—as most people

Figure 1. Flow chart of the literature.

## Detection and Characterization of E-Health Research: A Bibliometrics (2001–2016) DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.88610

think, E-health application is cost-effective and efficient and will improve qualities of clinical work [23–25]. The academic literature has primarily focused on issues in the adoption and diffusion of specific E-health technologies, and only a few papers concern on the development of E-health subject [26]. This leads to the current state that although some literature reviews cover one part or the other of the field [27, 28], an overall picture is still missing which is possibly due to the field's constant evolution. Besides, coherence of these researches is poor, and the interaction between scholars is not enough, making it difficult to reach a consensus about E-health research.

We explore the law of E-health discipline development using the scientific metrology, social network analysis, and information visualization technology. Progressively synthesized co-citation networks are constructed and visualized to aid visual analytic studies of the domain's structural and dynamic patterns and trends [29]. The formation of E-health, hot topics evolution, and trend of this research field being explored is achieved.

This study aims to present an analytical review on the state of E-health research. A review framework composed of multiple research methods is developed and applied to yield a broad coverage of E-health research. We explore the distribution of E-health hot topics and probe the research frontier by bibliometric methods. The evolution of different topics is evaluated and some research directions are proposed.
