Cybersecurity in mobile health apps: a bibliometric analysis

The ever-increasing use of mobile phones in the last few decades has brought forth many advances and changes into various aspects of life and society and healthcare is one of the most fundamental ones. mHealth applications are becoming more and more prominent and essential for providing to patients a comprehensive and holistic approach for their health and wellbeing, with applications that allow remote connection between patient and physician, diagnosis and monitoring. Of course, there are challenges that arise from this increased reliance on mobile applications for health, one of which is guaranteeing the security of the sensitive health information and patient records that are accessed, transmitted and stored via these applications. This work presents a bibliometric analysis of published work in cybersecurity for mHealth applications, to identify the emergent themes and trends in this research area and the interconnection of thematic keywords between these two topics. The goal of this is to provide insights into the evolution of the role of cybersecurity in mobile health application development and provide ideas for future, interdisciplinary work in this research area.