Comparison between Iranian health scientific outputs and disease burden

One of the most important infrastructures for the development and progress of countries is scientific outputs and targeted research to meet the needs of society and reduce the disease burden. The aim of this study was to determine the relationship between the number of scientific outputs indexed in PubMed, related to ten diseases with the highest mortality rate in Iran and the burden of each disease in 2000-2017.

In this applied study with a scientometric approach, firstly, the data on ten diseases with the highest mortality rates, in order of rank, in Iran were obtained from the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. Next, two health indicators, the number of lost years due to disability or death and disability caused by diseases and injuries related to each disease was extracted from the relevant site. Afterwards, using the controlled terms as the subject of the mesh, the related words with their synonyms in each disease were documented and then searched. Descriptive statistics was used to calculate the descriptive indicators and Pearson correlation test was applied to determine the relationship between the variables.

The findings showed that as the years progressed towards the present time, the number of scientific outputs related to ten diseases with the highest mortality rate in Iran increased, but it was relatively fewer in some diseases such as maternal and neonatal disorders, chronic respiratory diseases, transportation injuries and unintentional injuries. There was no relationship between the number of articles in the studied time periods and variables of disease burden. The trend of changes in the number of scientific outputs in ten diseases with the highest mortality rate in Iran and burden of each disease was not the same.

Although health researchers have done numerous quantitative researches, many of them have not been solved the problem, and it seems that the researches have not been guided in the right direction. Problem-based research is not designed. Grant allocations have not been based on the facts at the universities and research centers. Professional management of academic research must be created to meet the real needs of the community. Moreover, medical universities can perform their research based on these priority topics.