Introduction of “Security Guidelines for Medical Information Systems by Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare of Japan 2005”

Abstract

 In March 2005, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare of Japan published “Security Guidelines for Medical Information Systems 2005”. This guideline have some standpoints, the supplemental guidelines of “Guidelines for privacy protection in health field, a part of infrastructure for Information and Communication Technology Strategy of Japanese government, guidelines for applying Digital Documents Act in health field, and update version of guidelines for digital storage of medical records. Indeed we had some security guidelines for medical information systems, but those are only applied with limited situation and not for general information system security. This is the first attempt to make guideline for general security of various medical information systems and we hope this guideline will be baseline to build up social consensus for security and privacy protection of medical information systems.