A Quarter-Century of Extended Reality in Health Promotion: A Bibliometric and Co-Word Analysis

Background: Immersive technologies such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and extended reality (XR) are transforming healthcare by enhancing diagnostics, training, and therapy. However, fragmented research has limited its widespread clinical adoption. Methods: This study employed bibliometric and co-word analyses to examine English-language scientific research indexed in Web of Science, Scopus, and PubMed between 2000 and 2024. Advanced visualization tools, including VOSviewer and the R programming environment, were utilized for dataset analysis. Results: A total of 3150 documents were retrieved from 1328 journals. The findings revealed a rapid growth trajectory in XR applications within healthcare research, with an annual growth rate of 18.76%. Key thematic areas include "Medical Education", "Mental Health", and "Rehabilitation", with emerging topics such as "Metaverse", "Digital Health", and "Artificial Intelligence" gaining prominence. Topic trends and word clouds underscore XR’s versatility across diverse healthcare domains such as pain management, mental health, and rehabilitation. The co-occurrence network analysis highlights the critical role of XR in health education, illustrating interconnections among themes such as medical education, training, nursing education, and simulation. Conclusion: The findings emphasize XR’s expanding role in medical training, mental health care, and rehabilitation, advocating for stronger policymaker support to foster international collaborations and adapt regulatory frameworks. Such adaptations are critical to integrating emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence and AR, into healthcare systems. Despite these insights, limitations include language restrictions and potential database bias. Future research should aim to include non-English literature and broaden database coverage to ensure a more comprehensive and globally representative understanding of XR applications in healthcare.