Mapping Interdisciplinary Research Trends in Health-care, Education, Leadership and Digital Health: A Bibliometric Analysis

As recent integrative developments of digital technologies in leadership and both healthcare and education demonstrate the degree of integration across contemporaneous fields, the new field of academic inquiry established by contemporary academic inquiry is increasingly becoming an interdisciplinary-based field of inquiry. Drawing from previous studies and analyzing a set of bibliometric data using the VOSviewer knowledge mapping tool, this study employs a secondary (illuminated) analysis of emerging research trends within healthcare education, leadership and digital health. The dataset for this study was obtained using the Lens database and the data were analyzed through network and thematic cluster analysis based upon co-occurrence of keywords and visual representation. One primary result was that "education" serves as the principal theme of research across this field. This theme demonstrates strong connection to research on healthcare, public health, leadership, curriculum development, nursing, digital health, sustainability and qualitative research. In addition, the visual representation indicates that emerging themes, such as artificial intelligence, climate change, mental health, cultural competency and healthcare leadership, are all increasingly important aspects of both education and medicine. Analysis, through individual thematic clusters, of this body of knowledge also demonstrates a significant amount of interdisciplinary collaboration between health care, education and technology-based research disciplines. Additionally, results indicate that an increasing amount of attention is being directed to human-centred healthcare education and digitally-integrated, traditional learning environments, by both educators and researchers in the fields of education and clinical medicine. The study also provides evidence of how leadership approaches to competence and curriculum will continue to influence both the delivery of healthcare and professional development in the future. This research presents an overview of the interrelated themes of research in order to better understand how scholarly activity has changed and offer information to researchers, educators, policymakers and health care providers. The data may provide a basis upon which to conduct future interdisciplinary research and inform strategic planning in health care and digital learning settings.