TY - JOUR
T1 - Conversational interfaces for health
T2 - Bibliometric analysis of grants, publications, and patents
AU - Xing, Zhaopeng
AU - Yu, Fei
AU - Du, Jian
AU - Walker, Jennifer S.
AU - Paulson, Claire B.
AU - Mani, Nandita S.
AU - Song, Lixin
N1 - Funding Information:
AHRQ: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality ASD: autism spectrum disorder CIs: conversational interfaces CNRS: National Center for Scientific Research CORDIS: Community Research and Development Information Service DII: Derwent Innovation Index EC: Europe Commission EU: European Union NIH: National Institutes of Health NSF: National Science Foundation PI: principal investigator R&D: research and development WIPO: World Intelligence Property Organization
Funding Information:
The project duration varied from 3 to 69 months. For example, Auburn University and the University of South Florida were granted 3-month funding from NSF and NIH, respectively. The University of Delaware received funding that lasted for 69 months.
Funding Information:
Among the 42 funded research projects focusing on CI technologies for health purposes, the total dollar amount of grants awarded was US $30,297,932, of which US $13,513,473 was awarded by funding agencies in the United States, and US $16,784,459 was awarded by the EC (Table 3 and Figure 3).
Funding Information:
This work was supported by Health Science Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, by R01NR016990 National Institute of Nursing Research (principal investigator: LS), by R21CA212516 National Cancer Institute (principal investigator: LS) and by University Cancer Research Fund of the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center at the UNC-CH (principal investigator: LS).
Funding Information:
The 42 funded projects involve a total of 64 granted organizations (Figure 4). Among the 27 US grantee organizations, 26 were research institutes. Boston Medical Center was awarded the largest grant size with 3 projects funded by NIH with a total amount of US $2,065,245 and 1 project funded by AHRQ with the amount of US $181,192. These 4 projects were granted for designing and evaluating CIs to improve patients’ engagement [39], for palliative care of patients with advanced illness, for reducing cardiopulmonary rehospitalization [40], and for treating comorbid depression (no outcomes reported). In Europe, the EC funded 18 private companies and 19 academic institutes. The University of Edinburg received the largest grant for a project that applied CI technology to support the treatment of major depression (ie, US $1,758,786) [41].
Funding Information:
National Science Foundation (the United States) National Institutes of Health (the United States) Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (the United States)
Funding Information:
Figure 4. Grant agencies and granted organizations network. AHRQ: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality; EC: Europe Commission; NIH: National Institutes of Health; NSF: National Science Foundation.
Funding Information:
The most commonly occurring terms (Figure 7) included patient, child, intervention, robot, and speech. The grants primarily focused on the patient, and 7 projects targeted the child or elderly populations. In addition, the term asd (ie, autism spectrum disorder [ASD]) was in very close proximity with child and occurred in 5 funded projects. For example, an NIH-sponsored project at the University of Connecticut and the University of Delaware in 2009 used social robots to support children with ASD. The term elderly was also addressed in 7 grants. For example, Auburn University and Clemson University proposed a project, funded by NSF in 2009, aimed to use CI to improve older adults’ quality of life. Furthermore, speech seems to be a preferred interaction modality in the proposals. For example, the University of Texas Dallas was funded by NSF to create a speech-enabled CI, which aimed to help individuals with hearing impairment and autistic children improve communication skills.
Funding Information:
databases) to investigate the development, research, and fund application of health-related CIs and associated stakeholders (ie, countries, organizations, and collaborators). Methods: A multifaceted search query was executed to retrieve records from 9 databases. Bibliometric analysis, social network analysis, and term co-occurrence analysis were conducted on the screened records. Results: This review included 42 funded projects, 428 research publications, and 162 patents. The total dollar amount of grants awarded was US $30,297,932, of which US $13,513,473 was awarded by US funding agencies and US $16,784,459 was funded by the Europe Commission. The top 3 funding agencies in the United States were the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Boston Medical Center was awarded the largest combined grant size (US $2,246,437) for 4 projects. The authors of the publications were from 58 countries and 566 organizations; the top 3 most productive organizations were Northeastern University (United States), Universiti Teknologi MARA (Malaysia), and the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS; France). US researchers produced 114 publications. Although 82.0% (464/566) of the organizations engaged in interorganizational collaboration, 2 organizational research-collaboration clusters were observed with Northeastern University and CNRS as the central nodes. About 112 organizations from the United States and China filed 87.7% patents. IBM filed most patents (N=17). Only 5 patents were co-owned by different organizations, and there was no across-country collaboration on patenting activity. The terms patient, child, elderly, and robot were frequently discussed in the 3 record types. The terms related to mental and chronic issues were discussed mainly in grants and publications. The terms regarding multimodal interactions were widely mentioned as users’ communication modes with CIs in the identified records.
Publisher Copyright:
© Zhaopeng Xing, Fei Yu, Jian Du, Jennifer S Walker, Claire B Paulson, Nandita S Mani, Lixin Song.
PY - 2019/11/1
Y1 - 2019/11/1
N2 - Background: Conversational interfaces (CIs) in different modalities have been developed for health purposes, such as health behavioral intervention, patient self-management, and clinical decision support. Despite growing research evidence supporting CIs’ potential, CI-related research is still in its infancy. There is a lack of systematic investigation that goes beyond publication review and presents the state of the art from perspectives of funding agencies, academia, and industry by incorporating CI-related public funding and patent activities. Objective: This study aimed to use data systematically extracted from multiple sources (ie, grant, publication, and patent databases) to investigate the development, research, and fund application of health-related CIs and associated stakeholders (ie, countries, organizations, and collaborators). Methods: A multifaceted search query was executed to retrieve records from 9 databases. Bibliometric analysis, social network analysis, and term co-occurrence analysis were conducted on the screened records. Results: This review included 42 funded projects, 428 research publications, and 162 patents. The total dollar amount of grants awarded was US $30,297,932, of which US $13,513,473 was awarded by US funding agencies and US $16,784,459 was funded by the Europe Commission. The top 3 funding agencies in the United States were the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Boston Medical Center was awarded the largest combined grant size (US $2,246,437) for 4 projects. The authors of the publications were from 58 countries and 566 organizations; the top 3 most productive organizations were Northeastern University (United States), Universiti Teknologi MARA (Malaysia), and the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS; France). US researchers produced 114 publications. Although 82.0% (464/566) of the organizations engaged in interorganizational collaboration, 2 organizational research-collaboration clusters were observed with Northeastern University and CNRS as the central nodes. About 112 organizations from the United States and China filed 87.7% patents. IBM filed most patents (N=17). Only 5 patents were co-owned by different organizations, and there was no across-country collaboration on patenting activity. The terms patient, child, elderly, and robot were frequently discussed in the 3 record types. The terms related to mental and chronic issues were discussed mainly in grants and publications. The terms regarding multimodal interactions were widely mentioned as users’ communication modes with CIs in the identified records. Conclusions: Our findings provided an overview of the countries, organizations, and topic terms in funded projects, as well as the authorship, collaboration, content, and related information of research publications and patents. There is a lack of broad cross-sector partnerships among grant agencies, academia, and industry, particularly in the United States. Our results suggest a need to improve collaboration among public and private sectors and health care organizations in research and patent activities.
AB - Background: Conversational interfaces (CIs) in different modalities have been developed for health purposes, such as health behavioral intervention, patient self-management, and clinical decision support. Despite growing research evidence supporting CIs’ potential, CI-related research is still in its infancy. There is a lack of systematic investigation that goes beyond publication review and presents the state of the art from perspectives of funding agencies, academia, and industry by incorporating CI-related public funding and patent activities. Objective: This study aimed to use data systematically extracted from multiple sources (ie, grant, publication, and patent databases) to investigate the development, research, and fund application of health-related CIs and associated stakeholders (ie, countries, organizations, and collaborators). Methods: A multifaceted search query was executed to retrieve records from 9 databases. Bibliometric analysis, social network analysis, and term co-occurrence analysis were conducted on the screened records. Results: This review included 42 funded projects, 428 research publications, and 162 patents. The total dollar amount of grants awarded was US $30,297,932, of which US $13,513,473 was awarded by US funding agencies and US $16,784,459 was funded by the Europe Commission. The top 3 funding agencies in the United States were the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Boston Medical Center was awarded the largest combined grant size (US $2,246,437) for 4 projects. The authors of the publications were from 58 countries and 566 organizations; the top 3 most productive organizations were Northeastern University (United States), Universiti Teknologi MARA (Malaysia), and the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS; France). US researchers produced 114 publications. Although 82.0% (464/566) of the organizations engaged in interorganizational collaboration, 2 organizational research-collaboration clusters were observed with Northeastern University and CNRS as the central nodes. About 112 organizations from the United States and China filed 87.7% patents. IBM filed most patents (N=17). Only 5 patents were co-owned by different organizations, and there was no across-country collaboration on patenting activity. The terms patient, child, elderly, and robot were frequently discussed in the 3 record types. The terms related to mental and chronic issues were discussed mainly in grants and publications. The terms regarding multimodal interactions were widely mentioned as users’ communication modes with CIs in the identified records. Conclusions: Our findings provided an overview of the countries, organizations, and topic terms in funded projects, as well as the authorship, collaboration, content, and related information of research publications and patents. There is a lack of broad cross-sector partnerships among grant agencies, academia, and industry, particularly in the United States. Our results suggest a need to improve collaboration among public and private sectors and health care organizations in research and patent activities.
KW - Bibliometrics
KW - Conversational interfaces
KW - Grants
KW - Healthcare
KW - Patents
KW - Publications
KW - Social network
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85075115171&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85075115171&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.2196/14672
DO - 10.2196/14672
M3 - Article
C2 - 31738171
AN - SCOPUS:85075115171
VL - 21
JO - Journal of Medical Internet Research
JF - Journal of Medical Internet Research
SN - 1439-4456
IS - 11
M1 - e14672
ER -