Nature Index 2024 Research Leaders: standout performers make their mark in health sciences

Data on leading countries and institutions in medical research reveal US lead remains strong but the gap is shrinking./standfirst>

18 June 2024

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The release of Nature Index data for the 2023 calendar year allows, for the first time, a year-on-year comparison of performance in the health sciences. A selection of health-sciences journals representing major disciplines and specialities in clinical medicine and surgery were added to the database in 2022.

The first obvious trend might not be much of a surprise. China is recording rapid growth in the subject and although clinical medicine is an area where it still trails the United States by some distance, it is catching up fast.

From 2022 to 2023, China’s contribution to health-sciences articles in the Nature Index — measured by adjusted Share, which allows for yearly changes in article numbers — rose by 14.6%. The United States’ adjusted Share in the subject fell by 1.5%.

Certain institutions in China appear to be at the forefront of this surge: Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou is the country’s highest ranked institution in the health sciences and saw its adjusted Share increase by 47.3% from 2022 to 2023. Other notable risers include Shandong University in Jinan, which tripled its adjusted Share and is now the 14th ranked Chinese institution in health sciences.

On the other side of the coin, many institutions in the United States are dropping (as the index represents a relatively finite set of articles, large rises are likely to be offset by drop elsewhere). Johns Hopkins University, the fourth-ranked health-sciences institution in the world, fell 11.9% in adjusted Share, while the University of California, San Francisco, dropped by 16.3%.

High performance

Much of the data also points to how the United States continues to be the runaway world leader in high-quality clinical research. The country’s fall in adjusted Share in health sciences was far lower than its drop overall (7.1%) in the Nature Index and its Share in the subject, 5,019.46, is still more than three-and-a-half times higher than China’s, at 1,400.68.

Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the top-ranked institution globally in the health sciences, actually increased its adjusted Share by 14.4%, a remarkable result given general patterns in the database. There were successes, too, for Columbia University in New York City, which placed 14th globally with a 17.8% increase in adjusted Share, and Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, which recorded a 19.1% increase to be 21st in the world. US institutions still also dominate the Nature Index 2024 Research Leaders healthcare sector tables. All but one healthcare institution in the top ten — when including all natural and health sciences subject areas — is located in the United States.

Six of those nine institutions did fall back, with the most notable being the Mayo Clinic, a hospital system headquartered in Rochester, Minnesota, which dropped 22.4% in adjusted Share.

But elsewhere there were gains. Healthcare institutions affiliated with Stanford University — which in the Nature Index overall dropped out of the leading ten — recorded significant rises: Stanford Health Care, ranked 26th, rose 93.9% and Stanford Children's Health, ranked 28th, was up by 83.3%.

European stars

Perhaps the most interesting trends in the health sciences and the healthcare sector can be found in some continental European nations that overall seem to bucking the general decline in contributions to Nature Index research from Western countries.

Among the leading 20 nations for health-sciences articles in 2023, nine were European countries that actually increased their adjusted Share in the subject. Four of these countries — Denmark (up 38.1%), Belgium (22.8%), Norway (22.6%) and Finland (15.5%) — did this with a higher percentage increase than China.

Of these, Denmark , a country with population of under six million people, warrants special attention. It has two institutions in the global 100 for health sciences, the University of Copenhagen, which increased its adjusted Share by 40.9%, and Aarhus University, which recorded a jump of 60.4%. The latter’s university hospital, meanwhile, was the top-ranked healthcare institution in Denmark and 50th in the world, and recorded an adjusted Share rise across all subjects of 52.4%.