The scientific-knowledge based institutionalization of Health Technology Assessment: a bibliometric and network analysis.

According to Banta [2003], Health Technology Assessment (HTA) requires special social factors in order to influence public health policy in a given country. If we agree that a positive relationship between policy makers, insurers and health practitioners must be present, we also claim that HTA first and foremost requires scientific expertise to emerge and become institutionalized. To address this socio-political phenomenon, we have undertaken a diachronic and synchronic analysis of the scientific literature on public health research. Such approach have already been choose by Macia-Chapulas [2012] to conduct a scientometric comparative analysis of health public policy among Mexico Chili and Argentina. Therefore, we undertook a worldwide literature search of large scientific database (Scopus, Web of Science & Medline) using text-mining techniques, and then by deepening them using bibliometrical, geographical and network analysis on a sample including more than 2000 scientific publications. Consequently, with the help of data mining visualization tools, we have been able to draw a landscape of the HTA field, gain an understanding of its history (between 1975 and 2012), examine its trends, rank the actors concerned and determine patterns of scientific collaboration in order to gain an understanding of the diffusion of ideas and, ultimately, the institutionalization of scientific knowledge expertise in this field.

In particular, by comparing the trajectory of the HTA concept in different academic fields, we reveal that its fertility is closely correlated with certain types of development of the disciplines of Health Economics and Epidemiology in different regions or countries. The so-called Scientific aspects of HTA have thereby been reinforced by disciplinary developments whose own success is strongly related to academic and political factors.