A Bibliometric Analysis of Female Technology (Femtech) Research: Trends and Gaps from 2013 to 2023
| Páginas | 127-143 |
| Fecha | 23 Diciembre 2024 |
| Fecha de publicación | 23 Diciembre 2024 |
| Autor | Chow Qian Yi,Soo Hooi Sin,Thi Lip Sam |
| Materia | Ciencias sociales |
J. Technol. Manag. Innov. 2024. Volume 19, Issue 4
ISSN: 0718-2724. (http://jotmi.org)
Journal of Technology Management & Innovation © Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Facultad de Economía y Negocios. 127
A Bibliometric Analysis of Female Technology (Femtech)
Research: Trends and Gaps from 2013 to 2023
Chow Qian Yi1*, Soo Hooi Sin1, i Lip Sam1
Abstract
Gender health remains an unnished issue worldwide. As the critical intersection of females’ health and technologies, Femtech emerged beyond a
niche market and disrupting conventional healthcare practices for women. Given the various interest and research outputs continue to mushroom
on females’ health, a retrospective view on this dynamic eld is essential. is research aims to examine Femtech global research landscape using
bibliometric analysis technique. Following PRISMA ow diagram, Femtech publications published between 2013 and 2023 in Scopus database
were systematically analyzed. A total of 183 publications covering 21 subject areas, in 6 languages from 44 countries were identied for this pur-
pose. e outcomes indicate these publications were predominantly in the eld of medicine rather than information technology and a majority
were monopolized by authors, journals and sponsors from developed nations. Initial keywords review found to accentuate “mhealth”; “pregnan-
cy”; “mobile applications”; “women’s health”, however, “telehealth”; “wearables”; “privacy”; “reproductive health”; “menopause” had also drawn
high interest. e research contributes methodically by applying bibliographic analysis to understand Femtech research trends and assess citations
as measure impact on Femtech research ecosystem. is research provides a blueprint empowering researchers, practitioners, investors, Femtech
industry players and stakeholders to collaborate in Femtech research to enhance adoption of Femtech globally.
Keywords : Femtech; digital health; female technology; women health; bibliometric analysis
Submitted: October 6, 2024 / Approved: December 26, 2024
(1) School of Business Management, Universiti Utara Malaysia, Kedah, Malaysia.
*Corresponding author: chow_qian_yi2@oyagsb.uum.edu.my
Introduction
“Femtech” was coined by Ida Tin in 2016 (Tin, 2016). It is dened as
a plethora of tech-driven medical and healthcare soware, products
and services specically tailored to cater diverse female’s hea lth needs
(Almeida, Balaam & Comber, 2020; Tin, 2016). ese gendered solu-
tions consider cisgender women, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender,
queer, or questioning and other (LGBTQ+ communities), health insti-
tutions, fertility clinics and diagnostic centers as target users. Femtech
harnesses an array of innovation encompassing computer vision, arti-
cial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), internet of things (IoT),
big data analytics, blockchain technology, cloud computing, virtual re-
ality (VR), augmented reality (AR), robotics and others to seamlessly
address conditions that solely, disproportionately or dierently aect-
ing females across lifespan (e.g. menstruation, pregnancy, gynecologic
cancers, osteoporosis, cardiovascular diseases) (Dokras, 2022; Barreto
et al., 2021; Femtech Analytics, 2021). Period trackers, fertility brace-
lets, pregnancy contraction digital sensor, digital breast pumps, smart
bras and menopause apps are a fraction of diverse Femtech.
e emergence of Femtech has revolutionized the landscape of female’s
healthcare delivery and experiences (Somera, Mendez & Mummert,
2020; Mutsai & Coleman, 2019). It serves as a viable alternative to
bridge health disparities, promote self-empowerment, improve health
and life outcomes among females (Guo, Liu & Prester, 2023; Urquijo &
Belloso, 2023; Mehrnezhad et al., 2022; Gkrozou et al., 2019; Fitzpat-
rick & akor, 2019). In 2021, the global Femtech market was valued
approximately USD 51 billion and was projected to hit USD 103 billion
by 2030 trailing at 8.1% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) 2022-
2030 (Stewart, 2022). e growth has been intertwined with a series of
factors including the prevalence of female’s health issues, positive so-
cietal shi to destigmatized topics about female’s health, motivation of
feminist human-computer interaction (HCI), inux investments, and
advanced technologies (McMillan, 2023; Alexander et al., 2020; Hillyer,
2020; Keyes et al., 2020; Tingen, Halvorson & Bianchi, 2020; Fitzpat-
rick & akor, 2019). e recent outbreak of global health crisis such
as Coronavirus pandemic 2019 (COVID-19) and increasing awareness
and demands on personalized health solutions have further catalyzed
the pace of Femtech evolution (Figueiredo et al., 2024; Atkinson et al.,
2023; Hod et al., 2023; Milcent & Zbiri, 2023).
Following the introduction, the remainder of the paper is structured
as follows. Section 2 provides a comprehensive review of existing
literature relevant to the topic. Section 3 introduces the methodological
procedure employed in this research. Section 4 analyzes the dataset and
discusses the results. e nal section encapsulates primary research
ndings and highlights implications arise from the study, and research
limitations suggested possibilities for future research.
J. Technol. Manag. Innov. 2024. Volume 19, Issue 4
ISSN: 0718-2724. (http://jotmi.org)
Journal of Technology Management & Innovation © Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Facultad de Economía y Negocios. 128
Literature Review
While making remarkable progress, Femtech is still an emerging
technology. It is in the development phase where most materials and
information are white papers and technical reports generated by
manufacturers and stakeholders vested investment (Halaweh, 2013).
Researchers attempted to advance knowledge and scientic rigor on
Femtech through scoping review (Fiskå et al., 2023; Karim & Talhouk,
2021; Earle et al., 2020), narrative review (Warty et al., 2023; Hughson
et al., 2018), thematic analysis (Patel et al., 2024; Hohmann-Marriott,
2023; Nellore & Zimmer, 2023; Musgrave et al., 2020), systematic re-
view (Paripoorani et al., 2023), meta-analysis (Liu et al., 2022) and lit-
erature review (Haryanti et al., 2023). Nonetheless, these views were re-
stricted to specic types of Femtech (i.e. Apps, telehealth, telemedicine)
or medical eld (i.e. menstruation, pregnancy, menopause, cancer).
A synthesis on Femtech related research would provide a deep under-
standing on the overall research trends and possibly gaps for future
Femtech research. Particularly, advancement of information technol-
ogies and Internet in last decade plus recent Covid-19 health crisis in-
duced an explosive surge in science and clinical medicine publications
(Cheng et al., 2024; Hu et al., 2024). e rapidly grow scientic publi-
cations and new databases overwhelmed researchers and practitioners
to eectively manage the knowledge and information. e convention-
al literature review depends on manual screening and organization of
knowledge proven inadequate for these respective parties keep up to
date with new breakthroughs, emerging trends and research hotspots
(Cheng et al., 2024). e bibliometric analysis method is a benecial
approach. It applies mathematical and statistical tools to evaluate the
interrelationships and impacts of publications, authors, institutions and
countries in a specic research area. It enabled researchers to capture
historical knowledge and monitor the present research landscape of a
particular eld (Lawani, 1981). e applications of quantitative anal-
ysis, graphical representations and visualizations in bibliographic ap-
proach appear to be more intuitive and rigorous in providing compre-
hensive view (Wang et al., 2021).
Bibliometric analysis was rst introduced by Pritchard has long and
rich history over a century (see Broadus, 1987; Lawani, 1981). Cole and
Eales (1917), Hulme (1923) and Lotka (1926) were among researchers
who made the early attempts shaping the knowledge and development
of bibliometric approach. In earlier periods, most bibliometric analysis
primarily concentrated on author and citation metrics (Price, 1965). As
complex scientic communications and knowledge increasingly chal-
lenge researchers’ understanding, advanced approaches are needed to
navigate the research landscape. Bibliometric studies revolve facilitat-
ing visualization and network analysis on the types of collaborations,
countries involved, topics and other information burgeoning interest.
In recent time, this approach is widely applied in multidisciplinary
research such as Fintech (Aysan & Nanaeva, 2022), health technolo-
gies (Luo et al., 2022; Ali et al., 2021), women studies (Liu et al., 2023;
Hassan et al., 2022; Cardella, Hernández-Sánchez & Sánchez-García,
2020). However, bibliometric analysis on Femtech had received limited
attention among researchers.
With the increasing global focus on women’s empowerment and health,
researchers have bibliometrically analyzed various relevant research
elds. For instances, the topics of women’s reproductive health rights
(Farizi, 2024), obesity women with cancer (Gu et al., 2024), postmeno-
pausal women’s psychological health (Kalra et al., 2023), ovarian cancer
(Cardella et al., 2020), fear of childbirth (Dai et al., 2020), health in-
equalities (Cash-Gibson et al., 2018), female genital mutilation (Swei-
leh, 2016) and others. e main goal behind these literature was to
solve issues impacting women’s health, wellness and self-empowerment
in dierent contexts with evidence generated via the bibliometric tools.
Femtech is a disruptive technology that enables a more inclusive and
equal society specically for women. Yet, few bibliometric studies have
examined this topic. For example, Mulyani et al. (2024), Sibanda,
Ndayizigamiye and Twinomurinzi (2024) analyzed the use of Industry
4.0 technologies and digital communication media in maternal care us-
ing this approach. While Ramasamy et al. (2024) provide bibliometric
evidence on the role of digital technologies on women’s empowerment
and entrepreneurial activity. Foreseeing the temporal focus of digital
health industry moving toward key themes of “AI”, “patient empower-
ment” (Hu et al., 2024), and increasing interest in gender-based biblio-
metric studies (Sebo et al., 2024) . is research is timely and essential.
is paper endeavored to assess the global research landscape on Fem-
tech, therefore, the proposed research objectives are to examine: (a)
Frequency and trends on Femtech publications, (b) Common keywords
used, research hotspots and frontiers (c) Key contributors, (d) Publi-
cation impact in the eld of Femtech, and (e) Scholarly collaboration
patterns.
Methodology
Applying bibliometric analysis approach, this research retrieved data
from Scopus database. e database consists of more than 94 million
multidisciplinary documents updated daily from about 7,000 interna-
tional publishers and over 2.4 billion cited references (Elsevier, 2024).
It is a robust and reliable data source extensively used to analyze bib-
liographic data (Hassan et al., 2022; Singh et al., 2021; Baas et al., 2020;
Zhu & Liu, 2020, Li et al., 2010). Moher et al. (2009) PRISMA ow
diagram was adapted for this research (see Figure 1). is research fo-
cuses specically on publications pertaining to Femtech within 2013
to 2023 as inclusion criteria. is timeframe reects the most relevant
trends and advancement of Femtech eld. Although the terminology
of Femtech was popularized in 2016, the concepts began to gain trac-
tion around 2013. e rst menstruation fertility tracking mobile apps
became available the same year marking Femtech initial emergence
(Femtech Analytics, 2021). Setting a broad timeframe could include
less relevant publications which risks diluting the focus and deriving
bias conclusions. Parenthetically, bibliometric analysis involves review-
ing abundance documents and setting a specic timeframe ensures the
methodological soundness.
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