A bibliometric analysis of published literature on healthcare facilities' wayfinding research from 1974 to 2020

Wayfinding in complex environments is a public issue facing the world and has become a hot research topic in recent years. This article reviews and quantitatively analyzes the literature on wayfinding in healthcare facilities and collates the research trends and hotspots in this area.

The article used bibliometric analysis to search keywords in the Scopus database in the TITLE-ABS-KEY format. In total, 2359 articles were finally collated between 1974 and 2020 after three screening exercises, and a co-citation analysis was conducted by VOSviewer literature visualization analysis software.

Research in the worldwide literature on wayfinding in healthcare facilities has grown steadily year on year since 2002. Computer science (21.5%) and social science (15.5%) are the most common subject categories, with the United States (N = 767) accounting for the largest proportion of research. "Lecture Notes In Computer Science Including Subseries Lecture Notes In Artificial Intelligence And Lecture Notes In Bioinformatics" is the most active journal in terms of publications (N = 169).

Wayfinding cognition, wayfinding behavior, and individual and group differences are currently the focus of research in the field of healthcare facilities. Future research on wayfinding in healthcare facilities will further investigate intelligent assistive technologies and universal designs such as universal signage systems. In addition, cross-cultural-based wayfinding research is a hot topic for future studies where the boundaries of research are broadened and have practical value.