Mapping the concept of health care integration: A lexicographic analysis of scientific literature

• Type: Article in International Scientific Journal
• Date: 2024

Authors

Urionagueena, A (Author) Other; Piquer-Martinez, C (Author) Other; Benrimoj, SI (Author) Other; Calvo, B (Author) Other; Garcia-Cardenas, V (Author) Other; Gastelurrutia, MA (Author) Other; Martinez-Martinez, F (Author) Other; Fernandez-Llimos, F (Author) FFUP

Journal

Title: Research in Social and Administrative Pharmacy

Vol. 20

Pages: 506-511

ISSN: 1551-7411

Publisher: Elsevier

Indexing

ISI Web of Knowledge - 0 Citations

Scopus - 1 Citation

Other information

Authenticus ID: P-010-14W

DOI: 10.1016/j.sapharm.2024.01.013

Abstract (EN): Background: Systems fragmentation is a major challenge for an efficient organization, integration being a potential solution also proposed in health care field, including pharmacy as a player. However, the use of different terms and definitions in the literature hinders the comparison of different integration initiatives. Objective: To identify and map the terms used in scientific literature regarding integration in health care and to characterize each emerging topic. Methods: A lexicographic analysis of the integration of healthcare systems literature indexed in PubMed was conducted. Ten different systematic searches, four using only Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) and six using text words, were conducted in March 2023. Journal scattering was analyzed following Bradford's distribution using the Leimkuhler model. An overall text corpus was created with titles and abstracts of all the records retrieved. The corpus was lemmatized, and the most used bigrams were tokenized as single strings. To perform a topic modeling, the lemmatized corpus text was analyzed using IRaMuTeQ, producing descending hierarchic classification and a correspondence analysis. The 50 words with higher chi-square statistics in each class were considered as representative of the class. Results: A total of 42,479 articles published from 1943 to 2023 in 4469 different journals were retrieved. The MeSH Delivery of Health Care, Integrated, created in the 1996 MeSH update, was the most productive retrieving 33.7 % of the total articles but also retrieving 22.6 % of articles not retrieved in any other search. The text word Integration appeared in 15,357 (36.2 %) records. The lexicographic analysis resulted in 7 classes, named as: Evidence and implementation, Quantitative research, Professional education, Qualitative research, Governance and leadership, Clinical research, and Financial resources. Association between the classes and the searches or the text-words used ranged from moderate to weak demonstrating the lack of a standard pattern of use of terms in literature regarding healthcare integration. Conclusions: The term integration and the MeSH Delivery of Health Care, Integrated are the most used to represent the concept of integration in healthcare and should be the preferred terms in the literature.

Language: English

Type (Professor's evaluation): Scientific

No. of pages: 6