Teleophthalmology research: Where do we stand?

Abstract

Purpose: To identify global research trends in teleophthalmology, as well as productivity and its association with Human development index (HDI).

Methods: A cross-sectional study. The main outcome measures were publication count, citation count, and publications count per million populations. Bibliographic data were derived from the Web of Science website. HDI data were derived from Human Development Report [2020]. One-way ANOVA test was used to examine the association between HDI and the outcome measures. We studied the correlation between continuous variables using Spearman's. Bibliometric analysis software's VOSviewer and Citspace were used to analyse results and creating visualizing maps.

Results: The results retrieved 355 publications, one-third of them have been published in the year of the COVID-19 pandemic; (2020). The USA has contributed to one-half of all publications, and just five countries have contributed to about 90% of all records. Very high HDI countries had significantly more publications count per million populations, than high (p-value = 0.0047), medium (p-value = 0.0081) or low HDI countries (p-value = 0.002). The main themes are screening programmes, reliability, photography, COVID-19, access, artificial intelligence, and cost-effectiveness. The leading countries in terms of both publications and citation count are the USA and India. In terms of publications count per million populations, the leading countries are Singapore and Australia.

Conclusion: Most of the contribution in teleophthalmology research was confined to a small number of countries. More effort is needed to expand the global contribution. The hotspots in this field are artificial intelligence applications and COVID-19 impact.

Keywords: Practice management; legal aspects of medical/surgical therapy; preventive medicine/screening; retinal pathology/research; telemedicine.