A Visualization Analysis of Medical and Prevention Fusion Research in China via CiteSpace.

Abstract

Since the 1990s, the acceleration of population aging has led to an increased prevalence of chronic diseases and enhanced public health awareness. Numerous countries have proposed healthcare reforms, with a focus on creating an “integrated care” model that aims to improve the quality of medical services and reduce costs (1–2). In 2008, the World Health Organization (WHO) put forward the concept of Integrated Delivery Systems (IDS), advocating for continuous, timely and integrated medical services. In 2016, the WHO introduced the people-centered and integrated healthcare (PCIC) global health strategy model, which is highly compatible with the core concept of “shifting from disease treatment to overall health promotion” in the “Healthy China” strategy. Medical prevention fusion (MPF) represents the practical application of PCIC in China and serves as a significant goal for the country’s ongoing healthcare system reform. Furthermore, MPF is a crucial initiative for implementing the Healthy China Strategy. Following China’s reform and opening up, the economic system shift led to an increased focus on the market within public health. The public healthcare system experienced challenges while the orientation of public health work transitioned from “prevention” to “treatment”. This separation between prevention and medical treatment has made it difficult for China’s public healthcare system to address the increasingly complex public health issues and meet the rising health care demands of the general population (3). Consequently, the Chinese government has successively proposed strategies including medical prevention combination (MPCom), medical prevention integration (MPI), medical prevention collaboration (MPCol), and MPF. Analyzing the hotspots and trends in MPF may help clarify its conceptual connotations and related theoretical research. The data for this study were collected from three major Chinese databases: China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Wanfang, and VIP. A comprehensive search was conducted using the keywords “MPCom,” “MPI,” “MPCol,” and “MPF” in order to identify relevant studies published between January 1, 2000, and December 31, 2022. Data from the three databases were imported into NoteExpress (version V3.7; Beijing, China), a literature management software, to ensure the completeness of relevant literature and remove duplicates. The final dataset was then exported from NoteExpress in Refworks-CiteSpace format to CiteSpace for formal data analysis. The detailed screening process is depicted in Figure 1. CiteSpace (version 6.1.R6; Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, USA) is a tool utilized for examining current research hotspots and this analysis allows for a comprehensive understanding of the research directions within focal areas (4–5). In our study, we employed CiteSpace to analyze the co-occurrence and clustering of authors, institutions, and keywords, which we subsequently represented in the form of knowledge graphs. Within the network diagram, distinct nodes symbolize the analyzed elements. The size of these nodes reflects the number or frequency of publications (6). The connecting lines between nodes signify mutual relationships, including collaboration, co-occurrence, or co-citation (7). The number of studies published annually serves as an indicator of the activity within a specific research area (8). Supplementary Figure S1 (available in https://weekly.chinacdc.cn/) illustrates the temporal distribution of annual publications in the field of MPF. During these two decades, research on MPF can be divided into two distinct phases. Prior to 2016, fewer than twelve articles were published annually, suggesting that the field was in its nascent stage. However, following the WHO’s call for PCIC in 2016, China has progressively acknowledged the significance of MPF. Consequently, this phase has exhibited a consistent upward trend in the number of publications. The visual analysis map of the author collaboration network can be found in Supplementary Figure S2 (available in https://weekly.chinacdc.cn/). The map China CDC Weekly