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. 2025 Feb 11:13:1333.
doi: 10.12688/f1000research.156306.2. eCollection 2024.

Incentives in prescribing, dispensing and pharmaceutical spending: A scientometric mapping

Tocaruncho-Ariza L H  1   2 , Riascos-Ochoa J  2 , Jimenez-Barbosa W G  3
Affiliations

Incentives in prescribing, dispensing and pharmaceutical spending: A scientometric mapping

Tocaruncho-Ariza L H et al. F1000Res. .

Abstract

Introduction: Health systems worldwide are struggling to ensure the affordability of medicines. Prescription, dispensing, and pharmaceutical expenditures are key variables that highlight the need to understand how global scientific evidence is generated against factors (implicit and non-explicit) that influence these variables.

Objectives: Explore and provide a detailed description of the characteristics of the global scientific production of Open Access articles related to the prescription, dispensing and pharmaceutical expenditure faced by health systems worldwide.

Methods: A five-stage scientometric mapping was performed based on a systematic search of 8 databases. The five stages are: i) retrieval, ii) migration, iii) analysis, iv) visualization and v) interpretation.

Results: A corpus of evidence from 103 systematic literature reviews was obtained, screened and sifted, visualizing the countries, authors, databases, journals, institutions and time periods that contributed most to evidence generation. Central research themes are identified and phenomena related to article publication are discussed.

Conclusions: The analysis reveals a clear leadership of the United Kingdom and the United States in scientific production on prescribing, dispensing and pharmaceutical expenditure in health systems worldwide. This scientific production is mainly focused on financing policies, pharmaceutical incentives and interventions, and rational use of medicines. There is also evidence of the scarcity of scientific production in Latin American publications and authors, which could generate interest for future research.

Keywords: Drug financing; Health systems; Price regulation; drug cost; insurance.

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Conflict of interest statement

No competing interests were disclosed.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.. The annual production of publications.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.. Circular dendrogram on scientific output by year and database, in the research theme.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.. Histogram for the number of authors per article.
Figure 4.
Figure 4.. Bar chart for authors with 2 or more co-authorships in the study period 1998-2023.
Figure 5.
Figure 5.. Comparative histogram of annual co-authorships and average per article vs. annual publication production.
Figure 6.
Figure 6.. Top articles representing 80% of the total citations of the 103 SLR.
Figure 7.
Figure 7.. Bradford ring scatter plot of scientific production related to prescription, dispensing and pharmaceutical expenditure.
Figure 8.
Figure 8.. Journals with 2 or more publications.
Figure 9.
Figure 9.. Bar chart.
Journals with the highest number of retrieved publications by research topic.
Figure 10.
Figure 10.. Bar chart of publications by region and country of journal (D).
Figure 11.
Figure 11.. Bubble chart for quartile of journal of publication, and the number of related articles.
Figure 12.
Figure 12.. Publications by journal origin.
Figure 13.
Figure 13.. Sankey plot.
Country of affiliation of lead author and country of journal of publication.
Figure 14.
Figure 14.. Treemap.
Publications by country of affiliation of the main author for the research topic. 1998-2023.
Figure 15.
Figure 15.. Treemap.
Number of primary studies per country according to each SLR. 1998-2023.
Figure 16.
Figure 16.. Network of graphs.
SLR lead author's country of affiliation and countries of primary studies.
Figure 17.
Figure 17.. Diagram of arcs by country.
Affiliation of the main author (SLR) and primary studies.
Figure 18.
Figure 18.. Sankey plot by country: lead study, affiliation of lead author and journal of publication.
Figure 19.
Figure 19.. Sankey diagram with details of countries accounting for up to 80% of total primary studies.
Figure 20.
Figure 20.. Chord diagram for articles by country of affiliation of lead author and country of funding.
Figure 21.
Figure 21.. Word cloud of keywords from each article.
Figure 22.
Figure 22.. Word cloud to 55 terms from the research corpus.
Figure 23.
Figure 23.. Trends in the central theme on which publications are developed.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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