Bibliometric Characterization of Electronic Health Records in Privacy and Security 

Abstract

The impact of technology on improving health and well-being of individuals is remarkable. EHealth boosts the transition from paper-based health records to Electronic Health Records (EHRs). The use of EHRs can lead to improve quality of care, costs and time. In eHealth systems the health data is stored in digital form, and can be exchanged or accessed securely by authorised users. It is worth noting that medical data is considered very confidential information. However, the privacy and security of medical data remains a critical issue. Any leak or breach in security can lead to serious privacy damages for patients. Despite the safeguards, training courses and the consciousness on keeping data safe, the human error continues to be a problem. The main purpose of this paper is to present a bibliometric overview on the academic research related to privacy and security in EHRs. For this purpose, the papers of this study were searched in the Scopus. A period of 24 years was considered for selecting the papers. The information gathered in the database identified a total of 3,077 publications. Some key findings revealed that in the year 2015 the highest number of publications was produced. The Harvard Medical School was the most prolific institution with 2.44% papers from the total number of publications. A total of 97.21% of the documents were written in English. Finally, the results provided in this manuscript allowed us to make a picture on the current relevance in academic literature on privacy and security in EHRs.