Tracking and predicting growth of health information using scientometrics methods and Google Trends

Abstract

The scholarly impact of medical/ health information is measured by scientometric indicators like number of articles, citations and international collaborations. Now, several mobile health applications are available, smart devices to be used by citizens in evaluation of their own health.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the content of Web of Science (WoS) by searching the interdisciplinary field of Health information, 2010-present with the following WoS categories: Information Science, Library Science, Ethics, Education and Biomedical Engineering. We found 1425 results defined by a set of keywords. Data were retrieved and analysed using a bibliometric tool: VOS Viewer. We found that 34 countries collaborate in 9 clusters in this field, when we created maps over collaboration, co-authoring, and most used descriptors. We aim at drawing conclusions about top universities, authors and sources in the field and impact of health information.

We used Google trend, a Google application in order to find who is interested in the term Health information. We found that in high quality research and users of Google there are similarities regarding interest of searching in finding information.

Originality/value is that the bibliometric model approach is new in light of an overwhelming and exponentially growing amount of literature and comparison with people all over the world interest in searching Health information.