Research frontiers and trends in the application of artificial intelligence to sepsis: A bibliometric analysis

With the increasing interest of academics in the application of artificial intelligence to sepsis, thousands of papers on this field had been published in the past few decades. It is difficult for researchers to understand the themes and latest research frontiers in this field from a multi-dimensional perspective. Consequently, the purpose of this study is to analyze the relevant literature in the application of artificial intelligence to sepsis through bibliometrics software, so as to better understand the development status, study the core hotspots and future development trends of this field.

We collected relevant publications in the application of artificial intelligence to sepsis from the Web of Science Core Collection in 2000 to 2021. The type of publication was limited to articles and reviews, and language was limited to English. Research cooperation network, journals, cited references, keywords in this field were visually analyzed by using CiteSpace, VOSviewer, and COOC software.

A total of 8,481 publications in the application of artificial intelligence to sepsis between 2000 and 2021 were included, involving 8,132 articles and 349 reviews. Over the past 22 years, the annual number of publications had gradually increased exponentially. The USA was the most productive country, followed by China. Harvard University, Schuetz, Philipp, and Intensive Care Medicine were the most productive institution, author, and journal, respectively. Vincent, Jl and Critical Care Medicine were the most cited author and cited journal, respectively. Several conclusions can be drawn from the analysis of the cited references, including the following: screening and identification of sepsis biomarkers, treatment and related complications of sepsis, and precise treatment of sepsis. Moreover, there were a spike in searches relating to machine learning, antibiotic resistance and accuracy based on burst detection analysis.

This study conducted a comprehensive and objective analysis of the publications on the application of artificial intelligence in sepsis. It can be predicted that precise treatment of sepsis through machine learning technology is still research hotspot in this field.