Telepharmacy Research Trends; Current Situation and Future Perspective

Background and aims: Revelation of the Internet and common pharmaceutical care methodslimitations have caused the invention of the telepharmacy concept, defined as “providing pharmaceuticalservices to patients through communication technologies”. So far, telepharmacy hasmade significant achievements in patient telecare in rural areas and providing pharmaceuticalservices during the Covid-۱۹ pandemic. Studying this field trend can be a valuable basis fordetermining future perspectives of this field. In the current research, the bibliometric maps oftelepharmacy studies and their prospects are reviewed and analyzed.Method: Considering Aidi Ahmi standards for bibliometric studies, TITLE-ABS-KEY(“Telepharmacy”OR”Telepharmacy”) search formula was used to extract all Scopus-indexed studiesuntil ۲۰۲۲-۰۹-۵ (n=۲۷۰). Published articles data were included in VOS viewer software (version.۶.۱.۱۸۰) and checked with various analysis types, including co-authorship, co-occurrence,and citation, and analysis units including authors, countries, sources, documents, and keywords.Finally, various maps and bibliometric tables were designed, and related quantitative and qualitativeanalyses were reported.Results: Our study showed that the first article in this field was published in ۱۹۹۸. The most activeauthor in this field has contributed to only eight articles. International collaborations in thisresearch showed weak relationships. The USA and Spain, with the most articles, were the mostfocused countries (n=۱۰۷, ۱۵). Some countries, such as Iran and Australia, had only nationalresearch productions. In the case of Iran, only three articles have been published and a leading authorhas contributed to all of them. The recently published articles used ‘‘medication adherence‘‘,‘‘virtual pharmacy‘‘, ‘‘medication dispensing‘‘, ‘‘emergency medicine‘‘, and ‘‘hospital disturbingsystem‘‘ keywords more than before.USA, Italy, Spain, and Australia had the most cited articles,all of which were published in American journals. These articles were often prepared with aninterdisciplinary approach, especially in collaboration with medical profession researchers.Conclusion: This study showed that telepharmacy is still a novel research topic. The Covid-۱۹pandemic was a driving force for it, and our research revealed telepharmacy trends, importance,and future perspectives for scientific communities. The international cooperation of authors needsmuch more development. We found that authors often consider telepharmacy as an extra fieldof research. The USA has a critical role in research outputs of telepharmacy research; Iranianresearchers need to pay special attention to telepharmacy as their main research field consideringfuture trends. Also, the review of published articles shows that conducting interdisciplinarystudies, especially in medicine, provides more opportunities. All in all, we believe that focused,interdisciplinary, international teams should study telepharmacy technology and administration toflourish in this field of research.

کلیدواژه ها:

Telehealth ، Telepharmacy ، Bibliometrics analysis ، VOS viewer