Abstract
BackgroundInterdisciplinary research is an important feature of precision medicine. However, the accurate cross-disciplinary status of precision medicine is still unclear.ObjectiveThe aim of this study is to present the nature of interdisciplinary collaboration in precision medicine based on co-occurrences and social network analysis.MethodsA total of 7544 studies about precision medicine, published between 2010 and 2019, were collected from the Web of Science database. We analyzed interdisciplinarity with descriptive statistics, co-occurrence analysis, and social network analysis. An evolutionary graph and strategic diagram were created to clarify the development of streams and trends in disciplinary communities.ResultsThe results indicate that 105 disciplines are involved in precision medicine research and cover a wide range. However, the disciplinary distribution is unbalanced. Current cross-disciplinary collaboration in precision medicine mainly focuses on clinical application and technology-associated disciplines. The characteristics of the disciplinary collaboration network are as follows: (1) disciplinary cooperation in precision medicine is not mature or centralized; (2) the leading disciplines are absent; (3) the pattern of disciplinary cooperation is mostly indirect rather than direct. There are 7 interdisciplinary communities in the precision medicine collaboration network; however, their positions in the network differ. Community 4, with disciplines such as genetics and heredity in the core position, is the most central and cooperative discipline in the interdisciplinary network. This indicates that Community 4 represents a relatively mature direction in interdisciplinary cooperation in precision medicine. Finally, according to the evolution graph, we clearly present the development streams of disciplinary collaborations in precision medicine. We describe the scale and the time frame for development trends and distributions in detail. Importantly, we use evolution graphs to accurately estimate the developmental trend of precision medicine, such as biological big data processing, molecular imaging, and widespread clinical applications.ConclusionsThis study can help researchers, clinicians, and policymakers comprehensively understand the overall network of interdisciplinary cooperation in precision medicine. More importantly, we quantitatively and precisely present the history of interdisciplinary cooperation and accurately predict the developing trends of interdisciplinary cooperation in precision medicine.
Highlights
BackgroundPrecision medicine is a new medical model that tailors disease prevention and treatment by considering differences in people's genes, environments, and lifestyles [1]
This study can help researchers, clinicians, and policymakers comprehensively understand the overall network of interdisciplinary cooperation in precision medicine
Precision medicine has the following interdisciplinary characteristics: (1) the core technologies in precision medicine are provided by multiple disciplines, such as genomics technology, big data, and nanobiotechnology [10,11,12,13]; (2) precision medicine is widely applied in medical fields, such as internal medicine, surgery, and oncology [14,15,16]; (3) many difficulties and challenges still exist in the development of precision medicine that require extensive interdisciplinary cooperation [17]; (4) as is known to us, the subject categories of studies are assigned by the Web of Science to represent the disciplines involved in the research [18]
Summary
BackgroundPrecision medicine is a new medical model that tailors disease prevention and treatment by considering differences in people's genes, environments, and lifestyles [1]. The emerging field of precision medicine provides more precise, evidence-based medical services [2]. Precision medicine has the following interdisciplinary characteristics: (1) the core technologies in precision medicine are provided by multiple disciplines, such as genomics technology, big data, and nanobiotechnology [10,11,12,13]; (2) precision medicine is widely applied in medical fields, such as internal medicine, surgery, and oncology [14,15,16]; (3) many difficulties and challenges still exist in the development of precision medicine that require extensive interdisciplinary cooperation [17]; (4) as is known to us, the subject categories of studies are assigned by the Web of Science to represent the disciplines involved in the research [18]. The accurate cross-disciplinary status of precision medicine is still unclear
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