title: Trends in the growth of literature of telemedicine: A bibliometric analysis.
abstract: Over the past two decades, the use of telemedicine as a way to provide medical services has grown as communication technologies advance and patients seek more convenient ways to receive care. Because developments within this field are still rapidly evolving, identifying trends within telemedicine literature is an important task to help delineate future directions of telemedicine research. In this study, we analyzed 7960 telemedicine-related publication records found in the Science Citations Index - Expanded database between 1993 and 2012. Bibliometric analyses revealed that while the total growth in telemedicine literature has been significant in the last twenty years, the publication activity per country and over time has been variable. While the United States led the world in the cumulative number of telemedicine publications, Norway ranked highest when we ordered countries by publications per capita. We also saw that the growth in the number of publications per year has been inconsistent over the past two decades. Our results identified that neuroscience neurology and nursing as two fields of research in telemedicine that have seen considerable growth in interest in this field, and are poised to be the focus of research activity in the near future.
authors.affiliation: School of Health Care Administration, Taipei Medical University, Taiwan; Institute of Health Policy and Management, National Taiwan University, Taiwan; Golden Dream Think Tank and Research Center, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Ya-Ting
authors.initials: YT
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: Graduate Institute of Biomedical Informatics, College of Medical Science and Technology, Taipei Medical University, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Usman
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Iqbal
authors.affiliation: School of Health Care Administration, Taipei Medical University, Taiwan; Golden Dream Think Tank and Research Center, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Jack Horn-Yu
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Ching
authors.affiliation: Golden Dream Think Tank and Research Center, Taiwan; College of Health Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA.
authors.forename: Jonathan Bee-Shen
authors.initials: JB
authors.lastname: Ting
authors.affiliation: Golden Dream Think Tank and Research Center, Taiwan; Department of Public Health, China Medical University, Taichung, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Hsien-Tsai
authors.initials: HT
authors.lastname: Chiu
authors.affiliation: Hokkaido University Office of International Affairs, Sapporo, Japan.
authors.forename: Hiko
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Tamashiro
authors.affiliation: School of Health Care Administration, Taipei Medical University, Taiwan; Golden Dream Think Tank and Research Center, Taiwan. Electronic address: elsahsu@tmu.edu.tw.
authors.forename: Yi-Hsin Elsa
authors.initials: YH
authors.lastname: Hsu
mesh_terms: D015706:Bibliometrics; D011642:Publications / Q000639:trends*; D017216:Telemedicine
keywords: Bibliometrics; E-health; Telecare; Telehealth; Telemedicine