Virtual Reality Aided Therapy towards Health 4.0: A Two-Decade Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

Health 4.0 aligns with Industry 4.0 and encourages the application of the latest technologies to healthcare. Virtual reality (VR) is a potentially significant component of the Health 4.0 vision. Though VR in health care is a popular topic, there is little knowledge of VR-aided therapy from a macro perspective. Therefore, this paper was aimed to explore the research of VR in aiding therapy, thus providing a potential guideline for futures application of therapeutic VR in healthcare towards Health 4.0. A mixed research method was adopted for this research, which comprised the use of a bibliometric analysis (a quantitative method) to conduct a macro overview of VR-aided therapy, the identification of significant research structures and topics, and a qualitative review of the literature to reveal deeper insights. Four major research areas of VR-aided therapy were identified and investigated, i.e., post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety and fear related disorder (A&F), diseases of the nervous system (DNS), and pain management, including related medical conditions, therapies, methods, and outcomes. This study is the first to use VOSviewer, a commonly used software tool for constructing and visualizing bibliometric networks and developed by Center for Science and Technology Studies, Leiden University, the Netherlands, to conduct bibliometric analyses on VR-aided therapy from the perspective of Web of Science core collection (WoSc), which objectively and visually shows research structures and topics, therefore offering instructive insights for health care stakeholders (particularly researchers and service providers) such as including integrating more innovative therapies, emphasizing psychological benefits, using game elements, and introducing design research. The results of this paper facilitate with achieving the vision of Health 4.0 and illustrating a two-decade (2000 to year 2020) map of pre-life of the Health Metaverse.

Keywords: Health 4.0; Health Metaverse; VOSviewer; anxiety and fear related disorder (A&F); bibliometric; diseases of the nervous system (DNS); health care; pain management; post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD); therapy; virtual reality.

Figure 1

The flow chart of the research methodology.

Figure 2

Network visualization of bibliographic coupling analysis of the theme of virtual reality (VR) and therapy in the Web of Science core collection (WoSc) database via VOSviewer (devised and generated by the authors).

Figure 3

Density visualization of bibliographic coupling analysis of the theme of VR and therapy in the WoSc via VOSviewer (devised and generated by the authors).

Figure 4

Overlay visualizations of bibliographic coupling analysis of the theme of VR and therapy within two decades (2000 to year 2020) in the WoSc via VOSviewer (devised and generated by the authors).

Figure 5

Four ranges in two decades (2000 to year 2020) of overlay visualizations of bibliographic coupling analysis of the theme of VR and therapy in the WoSc via VOSviewer (devised and generated by the authors).

Figure 6

Network visualization of term co-occurrence analysis of the theme of VR and therapy within two decades (2000 to year 2020) in the WoSc database via VOSviewer (devised and generated by the authors).