Mapping the Scientific Structure of Medical and Laboratory Equipment with Using the Co-occurrence Analysis

The purpose of this research is to map the scientific structure of the subject areas of medical and laboratory equipment articles using the co-occurrence analysis.

This research is a scientometrics study and has been done using co-occurrence analysis. The statistical population of the present study is all articles in the field of medical and laboratory equipment, which were indexed from 1984 to 2014 in the Web of Science. In this research, in order to draw a scientific map Ucinet software and its full complement Net Draw have been used and hierarchical clustering was performed with the SPSS software.

The results of the research showed in the frequency, the keyword "medical equipment" and in terms of the coincidence, two keywords "menstrual fluid- menstrual fluid" were the most frequent in the field of medical and laboratory equipment. The results of hierarchical clustering using the ward’s method led to the formation of four clusters in this area, which included the cluster of medical equipment, the cluster of therapeutic methods, the cluster of cardiovascular equipment and the cluster of diseases.

 The results of the co-occurrence analysis showed that the cluster of "therapeutic methods" and the "cardiovascular equipment" cluster are considered to be mature and central clusters and play a central role in medical and laboratory equipment research. Therefore therapeutic methods and cardiovascular therapies are among the key issues emerging in medical and laboratory equipment research that can predict the path to future research. Also, the cluster of "medical equipment" and the cluster of "diseases" are both central and in terms of density compared to other clusters at a low level and have a marginal role and less attention has been paid to research on medical and laboratory equipment.