Objective Based on evidence-based medicine systematic research and literature analysis methods, to make a quantitative and qualitative analysis on Chinese and No-Chinese literatures with subject of Medical Ethics. Concise and analyze the law and trends of subject development, to provide baseline data and decision-making reference for the relevant decision-making and follow-up study. Method We analyzed keywords in medical ethics articles in PubMed and CNKI database, and developed subject charts, research field relationship charts, and strategy coordination charts using word co-occurrence, PFNET algorithms, and visualization methods. Result Literatures collected from PubMed is six times than that from CNKI. Medical ethics research in China, starting later than abroad almost 35 years, is still at the preliminary stage of development. Eight matured research fields are formed as Morals, Ethical review, Physician-Patient relations, clinical trial, euthanasia, medical ethics education, clinical ethics, and health policy outside of China. Comparatively, in China there are only five fields are developed such as Morals, Physician-Patient relations, medical ethics education, bioethics, and medical research. Conclusion Foreign countries more focus on how to employ medical ethics to solve new problems occurred in clinics and medical research, with morals, ethical review, and Physician-Patient relations as the center of research net. Researchers in China pay more attentions on morals and education with morals as the only research net center. So an urgent need is called to make a transition from simply moral research into applied research stressing on both moral education and ethic review.
Objective To use visualization methods to illustrate and compare major subjects, domains, and developments in evidence-based medicine (EBM) in recent years. Methods We analyzed MeSH terms and keywords in EBM articles in the MEDLINE and CNKI databases, and developed subject charts, research field relationship charts, and strategy coordination charts using word co-occurrence, PFNET algorithms, and visualization methods. Results Rapid developments and growth are taking place in EBM in China and around the world. Studies on humans comprised 94.4% of the EBM studies that we identified, while animal studies accounted for 2.6% (three quarters of these animal studies were on primates). The six countries with the largest number of EBM articles and the eight host nations for the 108 journals with the most EBM publications were from high-income countries. In China, 31 provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions have published EBM articles, although most of these publications come from the more highly-developed areas of the country. The investigation of word co-occurrence showed that EBM articles outside of China involve seven main fields: “Therapy”, “Methods”, “Standards”, “Research”, “Education”, ”Nursing” and “Organization and Administration”. Five of these fields (“Therapy”, “Nursing”, “Research”, “Education” and “Management”) were common to China but the top seven fields for this country included “Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM)” and “Information resources”; and did not include “Methods” and “Standards”. Furthermore, studies on “Nursing” and “Research” were not as advanced in China as in other countries. Conclusion There are similarities between China and the rest of the world in several areas in the EBM literature but also some important differences. Throughout the world, the most resource-rich regions or organizations tend to have the most well-developed EBM. These regions and organizations are producing more evidence and conducting more methodology research than the less resourced regions and organizations. There is an urgent need for these regions and organizations to strengthen their use of evidence, to learn more about the philosophy that underpins EBM, and to improve accessibility to, and use of, evidence in choices about health care.