“In 2014, electronic health records were used in 2321 hospitals (27.3% of the 8493 hospitals). The high cost of introducing electronic health records, sensitivity of data privacy from the general public are major obstacles to disseminating electronic medical records. Ordering systems, picture archiving and communication systems were used in 3857 (45.4%) and 5755 (67.8%) of all respondent facilities (Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, 2017r).”
Source: Sakamoto H, Rahman M, Nomura S, Okamoto E, Koike S, Yasunaga H et al. Japan Health System Review. Vol. 8 No. 1. New Delhi: World Health Organization, Regional Office for South-East Asia, 2018.
“Japan has another important mechanism for the collection of health data on cancer, which is also administrated by the Director-General for Statistics and Information Policy of the MHLW [Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare]. Cancer registration in Japan has a long history spanning over 60 years; the first population-based cancer registry was established and administered by the prefectural government of Miyagi (situated in the north-western part of Japan, facing the Pacific Ocean) in 1951.
“After the Law on Health and Medical Services for the Aged was enacted in 1983, population-based cancer registries were initiated promptly in many prefectures. However, deficiencies remained in the local government-administered cancer registries, e.g. the reporting of cancer cases to the population-based cancer registries was voluntary task for medical institutions and as of 2007, there were population-based cancer registries in 35 of Japan’s 47 prefectures (Okamoto N, 2008). In 2013, in response to the looming elderly population with potentially 2–3 million cancer patients, the Act on Promotion of Cancer Registries was finally enacted in Japan. The Act stipulated that hospital managers must report information on any primary cancer that was first diagnosed in their institutions from 1 January 2016 onwards to the prefectural government (Matsuda T et al., 2015).”
Source: Sakamoto H, Rahman M, Nomura S, Okamoto E, Koike S, Yasunaga H et al. Japan Health System Review. Vol. 8 No. 1. New Delhi: World Health Organization, Regional Office for South-East Asia, 2018.
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Page last updated September 25, 2023 by Doug McVay, Editor.
