Topic prevalence and trends of metaverse in healthcare: A bibliometric analysis

Metaverse technology is an advanced form of virtual reality and augmented technologies. It merges the digital world with the real world, thus benefitting healthcare services. Medical informatics is promising in the metaverse. Despite the increasing adoption of the metaverse in commercial applications, a considerable research gap remains in the academic domain, which hinders the comprehensive delineation of research prospects for the metaverse in healthcare. This study employs text-mining methods to investigate the prevalence and trends of the metaverse in healthcare; in particular, more than 34,000 academic articles and news reports are analyzed. Subsequently, the topic prevalence, similarity, and correlation are measured using topic-modeling methods. Based on bibliometric analysis, this study proposes a theoretical framework from the perspectives of knowledge, socialization, digitization, and intelligence. This study provides insights into its application in healthcare via an extensive literature review. The key to promoting the metaverse in healthcare is to perform technological upgrades in computer science, telecommunications, healthcare services, and computational biology. Digitization, virtualization, and hyperconnectivity technologies are crucial in advancing healthcare systems. Realizing their full potential necessitates collective support and concerted effort toward the transformation of relevant service providers, the establishment of a digital economy value system, and the reshaping of social governance and health concepts. The results elucidate the current state of research and offer guidance for the advancement of the metaverse in healthcare.