How HKU Medical Research Travelled the World: Attention, Policy Uptake, and Clinical Practice
— by Fanny Liu
What happens to research after it’s published? At University of Hong Kong (HKU), medical outputs from 2020–2024 didn’t just circulate in journals—they reached global newsrooms, informed policies, and shaped clinical guidance. Using Altmetric Explorer, we looked at 10,508 HKU-affiliated medical research outputs to understand their online attention and broader influence.
Note: Image generated with Napkin AI, 29 August 2025.
Data
This post included 10,508 research outputs affiliated with HKU published in 2020-2024 contributing to QS World University Rankings by Subject of Medicine indexed by SciVal and tracked by Altmetric Explorer, retrieved 22 August 2025.
Strong reach
76.6% (8,052) of the outputs received some form of attention.
What travelled furthest
COVID-19 dominated—transmission, detection, clinical characterization, and vaccine safety. One notable outlier was climate and health, reflecting strong cross‑sector interest.
Media footprint
There were 32,557 news stories from 24,396 outlets across 116 countries. United States, United Kingdom, Australia, India, Germany accounted for the bulk of observed news coverage. There was also a long tail of global reach. As for local presence, Hong Kong saw 123 posts from 118 outlets.
Policy influence
2,401 policy mentions by 952 sources in 30 countries were recorded. Switzerland led by volume, reflecting WHO concentration. WHO alone accounted for 1,122 policy mentions; other multilaterals included FAO (129), OECD (99), World Bank (86), and WMO (31). Influence spanned high-income national agencies and a long tail across regions, including Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
| Policy Issuing Body | Count of Policy Mentions |
| World Health Organization (WHO) | 1122 |
| Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) | 163 |
| Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) | 129 |
| Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) | 99 |
| World Bank | 86 |
| Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health (CADTH) | 68 |
| The Publications Office of the European Union | 52 |
| The Microbiology Society | 44 |
| World Meteorological Organization (WMO) | 31 |
| National Bureau of Economic Research | 29 |
Clinical guidelines
481 mentions by 389 unique guideline sources in 26 countries were observed. Largest presence was in the United States and European countries, with meaningful uptake in East Asia and parts of Latin America. Mentions were distributed across many different issuing bodies, indicating broad practice relevance.
Limitations
Data were extracted on 22 August 2025. Coverage depended on what SciVal indexed and what Altmetric Explorer tracked.
The Altmetric Attention Score measures volume and source weighting of online attention only. It is not a proxy for research quality, scientific consensus, sentiment, or real-world impact. To build a convincing impact narrative, attention should be contextualized with evidence of real-world change in breadth and depth.
Dashboard
A dashboard can be found at: https://www.altmetric.com/explorer/report/db89da71-cf03-4b1e-8131-30116c3382ea
Results are updated automatically and may differ from this snapshot.
Bottom line
HKU’s medical research during 2020–2024 achieved strong global attention, policy translation, and practice relevance—largely propelled by timely COVID-19 science.
