ABSTRACT
This study maps the conceptual structure of health technology assessment (HTA) research with the aim of contributing to a better understanding of this research stream. A bibliometric analysis of 1,198 HTA articles retrieved from the Web of Science database was conducted. The analysis of descriptive performance indicators identified the main traits of the scientific debate about the HTA in terms of publications, productive countries, and sources. A co-word analysis was performed by adopting social network analysis tools to map the conceptual structure of the dataset. The results highlight the growing academic interest in the research topic, especially in recent years. The results revealed that HTA is a widely known term and represents the reference paradigm for assessment in healthcare technologies. This paper contributes to the field by providing an examination of the current state of the art of HTA research and identifying possible future research directions. This study differs from existing studies because it involved a conceptual analysis of the scientific literature using macro keywords.
Subject(s)
Bibliometrics , Technology Assessment, Biomedical , Humans , Technology Assessment, Biomedical/methods , Biomedical TechnologyABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic influenced people’s everyday lives because of the health emergency and the resulting socio-economic crisis. People use social media to share experiences and search for information about the disease more than before. This paper aims at analysing the discourse on COVID-19 developed in 2020 by Italian tweeters, creating a digital storytelling of the pandemic. Employing thematic analysis, an approach used in bibliometrics to highlight the conceptual structure of a research domain, different time slices have been described, bringing out the most discussed topics. The graphical mapping of these topics allowed obtaining an easily readable representation of the discourse, paving the way for novel uses of thematic analyses in social sciences.