The State of Ehealth Research across Information Technologies: A Longitudinal Analysis Using Topic Modeling to Address Future Scholarship

Abstract

eHealth research has been marked by the last two decades of scholarship spurred by technological advances and the potential of health promotion and behavior change. The study examined the state of eHealth scholarship across social, behavioral and information technologies through a systematic, machine-based learning approach of the last 19 years across 811 articles. The study analyzes topics that were published using latent Dirichlet allocation of studies from 2002 to 2021; it also raises ethical challenges for researchers related to those in prior health initiatives by the CDC and in current scholarship. Results show the common topics, terms, and linguistic attributes within the state of eHealth scholarship and disparities in other areas based on topics published. Suggestions are offered for interdisciplinary collaboration to facilitate the growth and the optimal, practical use of eHealth and directions for the future.