Growth mechanism of regional medical information sharing system in Nagasaki Prefecture

Abstract

This study illustrates the growth mechanism of ICT-based health care system in the most advanced case. Nagasaki Prefecture is the area where ICT-based health care system spread into major medical institutions. The system can be used for sharing of patient data among health care professionals. The growth mechanism can be broken into three stages based on participation rate and geographical coverage. There were bottlenecks in achieving the goal at each stage. The administrators of the system broke the bottlenecks by making extensive use of relationship of cooperation based on a network of personal contacts.