Visualization Analysis of Health Informatics Research from 2001 to 2018

To analyse the scientific outputs of health informatics research and explore its frontiers and hotspots, we retrieve publications on health informatics research from the Web of Science Core Collection between 2001 and 2018. Geographic information system mapping and visualization techniques were used for analysing the countries, journals, institutions, authors, references and keywords of publications. Timelines of co-citation clusters and keywords with citation bursts were created to study the emerging trends and hotspots. Six thousand seventy-seven publications were identified in health informatics research; the annual number of publications has increased rapidly over the last two decades. Keywords analysis indicated that ‘big data’ for health informatics and clinical informatics could become a research frontier. This study reveals the hot spots, structure and trend of health informatics research. Nevertheless, further research and cooperation are needed.