3.2 Research focus analysis and frontier analysis in E-health research

## 3.2.1 Research focus analysis

Research hot spots are issues or special directions studied by lots of people in recent years. Keywords, a highly generalized summary, and important index of papers are the core of academic papers. Therefore, we could get the research hot spots and the main subjects of one study area by analyzing the change trend and characteristic of the keyword frequency (Figure 5).

Due to the function of CiteSpace, the bigger the size of node is, the more important the node in the visualization map is. It is obvious that some keywords [Internet, telemedicine (m-health), technology, randomized controlled trial, management, and system] have a quite bigger size than others. Besides, considering that our research topic belongs to medical study, we could speculate that telemedicine, randomized controlled trial, health system, health management, and applying Internet-related technology in medical field have become the research hot spots and the main subjects in the study of most scholars from 2001 to 2016.

Seeing from the frequency of keywords, we can broadly divide the E-health research into several main subjects. "Internet technology" is the first one, which is the combination of "Internet" and "technology." E-health is the ICT in the field of healthcare, so the Internet technology development is driving force of E-health [17]. "Telemedicine," the second subject, appeared 618. It refers to the provision of remote clinical services via real-time two-way communication between the patient and the healthcare provider by using electronic audio and visual means.

"Telehealth," "m-health," and "communication" belong to it, which mainly concern on whether telemedicine or m-health could help improve the efficiency of individual access to medical services to solve the existing problems [47, 48]. "Randomized controlled trial," the third one, is research method and one kind of intervention. These clusters concentrate on proving the advantages and disadvantages of E-health Detection and Characterization of E-Health Research: A Bibliometrics (2001–2016) DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.88610

Figure 5. Visualization of hot topics in 2001–2016.

medical field. In the last 15 years, he proposed some network solutions, such as IPbased wireless sensor network, biofeedback data visualization for body sensor networks, real-time query processing optimization for wireless sensor network, and so on [40–42]. Gustafson typical papers are concerned with the research around consumer health informatics which influence on how patients or potential patients get health knowledge they need [43]. As for Eysenbach, he is the founder of E-health field, and he proposed the concept of E-health in 2002. In the subsequent time, he researched on the quality of electronic health information, Internet access to health information, and evaluation of E-health-related program [44–46]. According to the number of citations, Eysenbach is one of the most important core authors in E-health research. The focus of these five authors is not the same, but from the visualization map, their research direction all represents hot spots in this period.

Authors Frequency Rank Blobel B 35 1 Schreier G 33 2 Rodrigues JJPC 29 3 Gustafson DH 28 4 Eysenbach G 22 5

3.2 Research focus analysis and frontier analysis in E-health research

characteristic of the keyword frequency (Figure 5).

Research hot spots are issues or special directions studied by lots of people in recent years. Keywords, a highly generalized summary, and important index of papers are the core of academic papers. Therefore, we could get the research hot spots and the main subjects of one study area by analyzing the change trend and

Due to the function of CiteSpace, the bigger the size of node is, the more important the node in the visualization map is. It is obvious that some keywords [Internet, telemedicine (m-health), technology, randomized controlled trial, management, and system] have a quite bigger size than others. Besides, considering that our research topic belongs to medical study, we could speculate that telemedicine, randomized controlled trial, health system, health management, and applying Internet-related technology in medical field have become the research hot spots and

Seeing from the frequency of keywords, we can broadly divide the E-health research into several main subjects. "Internet technology" is the first one, which is the combination of "Internet" and "technology." E-health is the ICT in the field of healthcare, so the Internet technology development is driving force of E-health [17]. "Telemedicine," the second subject, appeared 618. It refers to the provision of remote clinical services via real-time two-way communication between the patient

"Telehealth," "m-health," and "communication" belong to it, which mainly concern on whether telemedicine or m-health could help improve the efficiency of individual access to medical services to solve the existing problems [47, 48]. "Randomized controlled trial," the third one, is research method and one kind of intervention. These clusters concentrate on proving the advantages and disadvantages of E-health

the main subjects in the study of most scholars from 2001 to 2016.

and the healthcare provider by using electronic audio and visual means.

3.2.1 Research focus analysis

Table 4.

74

High-frequency authors.

Scientometrics Recent Advances

programs. Fourthly, papers researching "healthcare field" focus on E-health application like electronic health record and attributes such as security, privacy, and interoperability [49]. With the promotion of information network technology development, the main task of the next phase is how to ensure the efficiency of Ehealth system data storage security, transmission, ease of use, and privacy protection. "Health management," the fifth one, is an abstract conception. Any keywords associated with management can be divided into this class such as selfmanagement, adherence, and mental health management [17, 50, 51].
