Abstract
BackgroundSmartphones have become an integral part of our lives with unprecedented popularity and a diverse selection of apps. The continuous upgrading of information technology has also enabled smartphones to display great potential in the field of health care.ObjectiveWe aimed to determine the future research direction of mobile health (mHealth) by analyzing its research trends and latest research hotspots.MethodsThis study collected mHealth-related literature published between 2000 and 2020 from the Web of Science database. Descriptive statistics of publication trends of mHealth research were determined by analyzing the annual number of publications in the literature and annual number of publications by country. We constructed visualization network maps of country (or regional) collaborations and author-provided keyword co-occurrences, as well as overlay visualization maps of the average publication year of author-provided keywords to analyze the hotspots and research trends in mHealth research.ResultsIn total, 12,593 mHealth-related research papers published between 2000 and 2020 were found. The results showed an exponential growth trend in the number of annual publications in mHealth literature. JMIR mHealth and uHealth, the Journal of Medical Internet Research, and JMIR Research Protocols were the 3 top journals with respect to number of publications. The United States remained the leading contributor to the literature in this area (5294/12,593, 42.0%), well ahead of other countries and regions. Other countries and regions also showed a clear trend of annual increases in the number of mHealth publications. The 4 countries with the largest number of publications—the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia—were found to cooperate more closely. The rest of the countries and regions showed a clear geographic pattern of cooperation. The keyword co-occurrence analysis of the top 100 authors demonstrated 5 clusters, namely, development of mHealth medical technology and its application to various diseases, use of mHealth technology to improve basic public health and health policy, mHealth self-health testing and management in daily life, adolescent use of mHealth, and mHealth in mental health. The research trends revealed a gradual shift in mHealth research from health policy and improving public health care to the development and social application of mHealth technologies.ConclusionsTo the best of our knowledge, the most current bibliometric analysis dates back to 2016. However, the number of mHealth research published between 2017 and 2020 exceeds the previous total. The results of this study shed light on the latest hotspots and trends in mHealth research. These findings provide a useful overview of the development of the field; they may also serve as a valuable reference and provide guidance for researchers in the digital health field.
Highlights
In recent years, smartphones have become popular in many countries; especially in high-income countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States—as of September 2019, the smartphone penetration rate is as high as 80% [1]
Given that mobile health (mHealth) depends on mobile devices, we searched for author-provided keywords related to both mobile devices and mHealth and general health
The number of publications related to mHealth has been increasing since 2004 (Table 1, Figure 2, and Figure 3) and has demonstrated an approximately exponential growth trend
Summary
Smartphones have become popular in many countries; especially in high-income countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States—as of September 2019, the smartphone penetration rate is as high as 80% [1]. The outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in 2020 has exposed the lack of medical resources in many countries [4,5,6,7] In this context, mHealth apps can monitor body information, such as heart rate, as well as behavioral information, such as real-time acceleration, through smartphones, smartwatches, and other mobile devices. MHealth apps can monitor body information, such as heart rate, as well as behavioral information, such as real-time acceleration, through smartphones, smartwatches, and other mobile devices This can enable people to check their health status at any time and provide medical staff with more reference data [8,9,10]. The continuous upgrading of information technology has enabled smartphones to display great potential in the field of health care
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