Mapping and visualizing the research contribution of India on telemedicine: A scientometric study

BACKGROUND: The term ”Telemedicine” is being used in the medical and health sector to treat patients and to provide medical guidance remotely. The intellectual output from India in terms of publications was harvested from Scopus(®) with the keyword “Telemedicine” and analyzed by using bibliometric techniques. METHODS: The source data was downloaded from the Scopus(®) database. All the publications on telemedicine and indexed in the database up to the year 2021 were considered for scientometric analysis. The software tools VOSviewer(®) version 1.6.18 to visualize bibliometric networks, statistical software R Studio(®) version 3.6.1 with the Bibliometrix package Biblioshiny(®) were used for analysis and data visualization, and EdrawMind(®) was used for mind mapping. RESULT: India contributed 2,391 (4.32%) publications on telemedicine to a total of 55,304 publications worldwide until 2021. There were 886 (37.05%) papers that appeared in open access mode. The analysis revealed that the first paper was published in the year 1995 from India. Steep growth in the number of publications was observed in 2020 with 458 publications. The highest, 54 research publications, appeared in the “Journal of Medical Systems.” The All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, contributed the highest number of publications (n = 134). A considerable overseas collaboration was observed (USA: 11%; UK: 5.85%). CONCLUSIONS: This is the first such attempt to address the intellectual output of India in the emerging medical discipline of telemedicine and has yielded useful information such as leading authors, institutions, their impact, and year-wise topic trends.