3.1.4 Authorship analysis

As for the publishing frequency of authors, their publishing situation was the same as the regarding countries'. We try to strengthen the cooperation between authors to serve the E-health and those producing more relevant output. As shown Detection and Characterization of E-Health Research: A Bibliometrics (2001–2016) DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.88610


## Table 3.

importance of a node in the whole network. It is more likely that the node is the key point in the network if the centrality is big. As shown in Table 2, USA's published quantity was the most in the top 13 countries. In detail, America published 1158 papers, which accounted for one-fifth of all literature from 2001 to 2016, whereas China was in the twelfth place. China published 154 papers, accounting for only 2.6%. Above countries had the centrality from 2002 to 2004, among which the USA have had it earlier in 2002 and CHINA in 2004. As for the centrality value, the USA, England, and Australia were the top three, and their researchers had a major influence on the field of E-health at the same time. Besides, the influence of China is

Frequency Centrality Country Rank 0.28 USA 1 0.17 England 2 0.15 Australia 3 0.16 Canada 4 0.08 Netherlands 5 0.11 Germany 6 0.1 Spain 7 0.04 Italy 8 0.02 Austria 9 0.12 France 10 0.05 Sweden 11 0.01 People's of Republic China 12 0.08 Switzerland 13

Every article has multiple research directions, but after statistically ranking, the top 10 directions were: healthcare science and service, computer science, medical informatics, engineering, public environmental occupational health, telecommunications, psychology, general internal medicine, and information science library science. In addition, these articles also involve some elements of clinical areas such as nursing, cancer treatment, pharmacy, and science and technology development (Table 3). The top four research directions are healthcare science and services, computer science, medical informatics, and engineering, accounting for more than 100%, which means all the literature is concerned with the four research directions, so it is suggested that these four research directions are the theoretical basis of E-

As for the publishing frequency of authors, their publishing situation was the same as the regarding countries'. We try to strengthen the cooperation between authors to serve the E-health and those producing more relevant output. As shown

quite weak because of its low-value centrality.

3.1.3 Research directions

Table 2.

High-frequency countries.

Scientometrics Recent Advances

health research.

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3.1.4 Authorship analysis

Research directions.

in Figure 4 and Table 4, the top five authors did not cooperate with others directly. It indicated that they focused on different topics and all of them were leaders in their research directions. Bernd Blobel was the top and he published 35 papers. He works at University Hospital Regensburg. By studying the privacy and security of some E-health system, he could analyze and design of advanced health systems properly [35–37]. Gunter Schreier concerns that using mobile devices or communication technologies provide huge opportunities for home monitoring applications [38]. He found that different types of data acquisition technologies have an important effect on patients' willingness to participate in telehealth programs in the long term [39]. JJPC Rodrigues works at the University of Beira Interior. He mainly studied the application effect of different kinds of wireless sensor networks in the

Figure 4. Visualization map of authors.


### Table 4.

High-frequency authors.

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.

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

To explore the degree of concern of the international E-health research, we divided it into three periods: from 2001 to 2005, 2006 to 2010, and 2011 to 2016. The frequency of keywords has been counted as shown in Table 5. Similar to the above method, we get the visualization maps of keywords in different times, as

In Atlas of visualization, the three stages of topics evolution show a gradual trend of convergence. In 2001–2005, the link intensity among high-frequency keywords was low. The study of E-health was at an exploratory stage, and research direction is scattered as scholars had not yet formed a complete theoretical system. With the emergence of E-health concepts raising academic great interest, scholars considered using network communication technology can greatly improve the quality of medical service and reduce healthcare costs. However, they also doubted whether it determined the actual role, which focused them on the theoretical exploration and the possibility of assessment of E-health [45, 52–54]. In 2006–2010, with the Internet explosively developing and governments attaching more importance to E-health gradually, some medical items based on network technology entered the implementation phase. Scholars tried to evaluate implementation of these projects from visual map aspects. The formation of E-health research prototype has an important connection with the Internet, telemedicine, and care.

associated with management can be divided into this class such as selfmanagement, adherence, and mental health management [17, 50, 51].

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

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

3.2.2 Visualization of hot topics evolution

Visualization of hot topics in 2001–2016.

shown in Figures 6–8.

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Figure 5.
