Health economics agenda in the 21st century - Analysis of research publication trends in health economics from 2000 to 2020

#Background The aim of this study was to assess the bibliometric output related to health economics from 2000 to 2020. #Methods Published papers that were indexed in Pubmed were enumerated and later stratified by regions. #Results A declining publication trend was observed, with the most articles recorded in 2015, followed by a steady decline ever since. From 2015 to 2020, as many as 42 thousand articles less was published compared to the projected trend of growth recorded from 2000 to 2015. This decline was the strongest for articles related to Europe and the Americas, while articles related to Africa, Asia, and Australia were rising. #Conclusions A steady decline of health economics research output was observed during the past five years, which was to a degree negated by the rising output from the low- and middle-income countries.