2012 Volume 55 Issue 9 Pages 647-661
Development of information infrastructure such as an electronic medical record system in medical care has been carried out as a national policy for over ten years in order to facilitate the provision of high-quality medical care to the public; however development of information infrastructure including electronic medical record system is still insufficient at present. In this paper, the results of a 2010 questionnaire survey targeting physicians working in hospitals were analyzed once again in order to estimate the related factors to “the presence or absence of a developed information infrastructure such as an electronic medical record system within the hospital”. The results suggested that differences of the development of information infrastructure within a hospital based on the bed size or ownership of hospital. Currently, the hospitals in which medical care information infrastructure development is progressing are, partially due to expense issues, medium or large-scale hospitals; however, more than 80% of Japanese hospitals are small-scale hospitals. Cost sharing through collaboration between multiple medical institutions within the same region and economic support from local and national government is considered necessary to promote future medical care information infrastructure development within hospitals, although it has been partially started to share the information about academic journal.
