Global Trends in mHealth and Medical Education Research: Bibliometrics and Knowledge Graph Analysis

Background: Mobile health (mHealth) is an emerging mobile communication and networking technology for health care systems. The integration of mHealth in medical education is growing extremely rapidly, bringing new changes to the field. However, no study has analyzed the publication and research trends occurring in both mHealth and medical education. Objective: The aim of this study was to summarize the current application and development trends of mHealth in medical education by searching and analyzing published articles related to both mHealth and medical education. Methods: The literature related to mHealth and medical education published from 2003 to 2023 was searched in the Web of Science core database, and 790 articles were screened according to the search strategy. The HistCite Pro 2.0 tool was used to analyze bibliometric indicators. VOSviewer, Pajek64, and SCImago Graphica software were used to visualize research trends and identify hot spots in the field. Results: In the past two decades, the number of published papers on mHealth in medical education has gradually increased, from only 3 papers in 2003 to 130 in 2022; this increase became particularly evident in 2007. The global citation score was determined to be 10,600, with an average of 13.42 citations per article. The local citation score was 96. The United States is the country with the most widespread application of mHealth in medical education, and most of the institutions conducting in-depth research in this field are also located in the United States, closely followed by China and the United Kingdom. Based on current trends, global coauthorship and research exchange will likely continue to expand. Among the research journals publishing in this joint field, journals published by JMIR Publications have an absolute advantage. A total of 105 keywords were identified, which were divided into five categories pointing to different research directions. Conclusions: Under the influence of COVID-19, along with the popularization of smartphones and modern communication technology, the field of combining mHealth and medical education has become a more popular research direction. The concept and application of digital health will be promoted in future developments of medical education.