Focusing on exploring the survival characteristics and influencing factors of emerging interdisciplinary knowledge elements, this study helps reveal the formation and evolution process of emerging interdisciplinary fields from a micro perspective, thus enhancing the scientific understanding of interdisciplinary development laws. Firstly, we construct a multidimensional index system, with which the disciplinary source and disciplinary influence attributes of emerging interdisciplinary knowledge elements are quantified. Then, we employ Kaplan-Meier method for the construction of survival curve and to analyze the differences in survival characteristics of knowledge elements with different attributes. Finally, the Cox regression is used to explore the effects on mechanism of survival time. Taking medical informatics as an example, the empirical analysis shows that the survival curve of medical informatics knowledge elements experiences a rapid decline in the first year and then a slow decline, with an average survival time of 4.41 years. The survival time of newly emerging knowledge elements in medical informatics is significantly lower than that of related disciplines. Among the related disciplines, the knowledge elements of computer science have the highest survival risk. The complexity of disciplinary source, the frequency of use and status of emerging interdisciplinary fields, and the popularity of related disciplines are all positively correlated with the survival time of knowledge elements. Compared with the popularity of related disciplines, the frequency of use and the status of emerging interdisciplinary fields have a higher degree of influence on the survival time of knowledge elements.