JAPAN鈥檚 hospitals may join the computer age in time for the millennium. Last
week the Ministry of Health and Welfare finally ruled that hospitals could stop
keeping paper copies of patient files.
A handful of Japanese hospitals already store patients鈥� notes on computer,
but it doesn鈥檛 save time because updates have to be printed and filed anyway.
The new ruling, which should take effect this summer, means that patients鈥� files
and their back-ups can be stored electronically.
The new system will also make it easier for doctors at different hospitals to
exchange information on a patient and search for data, something most European
and North American hospitals already take for granted.
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鈥淚 don鈥檛 think this could have been done much sooner,鈥� says Toshitada Kameda,
a member of the committee that helped design the changes. The committee had to
consider security issues and how to standardise the system across the board, he
says.
Kameda is chairman of the Kameda Medical Center in Kamogawa City, 50
kilometres east of Tokyo, one of the first hospitals bring in an electronic
system. From his point of view, the ruling is 鈥渇antastic鈥� news.