Medical informatics research trend analysis: A text mining approach

Area of Science:

• Medical Informatics
• Health Information Technology
• Biomedical Research

Background:

• The field of medical informatics is dynamic, with evolving research trends.
• Understanding these trends is crucial for guiding future research directions and defining academic boundaries.

Purpose of the Study:

• To identify major subject areas in medical informatics research.
• To explore the temporal changes and development trends within these subject areas.
• To inform the medical informatics community about the field's past, present, and future trajectory.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of 26,307 articles from top medical informatics journals (2002-2013).
• Application of a text mining-based, semi-automated approach to cluster research topics.
• Extraction and analysis of frequently appearing subject terms from article abstracts.

Main Results:

• Biomedical research areas show a declining trend.
• Research areas like health information technology (HIT), Internet-enabled research, and electronic medical/health records (EMR/EHR) are experiencing significant growth.
• The rise of HIT and the internet has transformed medical research methodologies.

Conclusions:

• The growth in HIT and EMR/EHR systems facilitates data analytics for novel medical insights.
• Data analytics is becoming an increasingly important and popular complement to medical research.
• Medical informatics research is increasingly driven by technological advancements and data utilization.