Mapping Medical Informatics Research

Abstract

The ability to create a big picture of a knowledge domain is valuable to both experts and newcomers, who can use such a picture to orient themselves in the field’s intellectual space, track the dynamics of the field, or discover potential new areas of research. In this chapter we present an overview of medical informatics research by applying domain visualization techniques to literature and author citation data from the years 1994 - 2003. The data was gathered from NLM’s MEDLINE database and the ISI Science Citation Index, then analyzed using selected techniques including self-organizing maps and citation networks. The results of our survey reveal the emergence of dominant subtopics, prominent researchers, and the relationships among these researchers and subtopics over the ten-year period.