Digital health research: A scientometric assessment of global publications output during 2007–2016

Aim and Scope: To study the scientometric assessment of global publications on Digital Health Research. Methods: The paper examines digital health research covering 6981 global publications sourced from Scopus database during 2007–2016. Results: Digital health research across 109 countries registered 8.03% growth and averaged to 7.33 citations per paper. The top 10 most productive countries individually contributed 2.75% to 33.82% share to global publications output and together they accounted for 79.30% share during the period. Their international collaborative publications varied from 3% to 14.49%. Medicine is the most studied subject with largest publication share in digital health research (53.55%), followed by computer science (33.85%), engineering (24.97%), health profession (13.24%), and others. The top 20 most productive organizations and authors together contributed 12.32% and 2.99% of global publications share, respectively, and 38.91% and 3.28% of global citations share, respectively. The top 20 journals contributed 12.32% share to the global output in journals during 2007–2016. Of the total digital health research, 46 (0.65%) were highly cited papers, citations to them ranged from 100 to 1104 per paper, with 257.76 citations per paper. Conclusion: A total of 415 authors from 242 organizations contributed 46 highly cited papers which appeared in 37 journals. Four papers appeared in CA Cancer Journal of Clinicians, three papers in Annals of Internal Medicine, two papers each in European Urology, Journal of American Medical Informatics Association, New England Journal of Medicine, Pediatrics and Stroke, and one paper each in 30 other journals.