医療サービスのイノベーション(<特集>サービス部門のイノベーション)

抄録

Healthcare services share a number of features of the tertiary (service) industry. The Japanese tertiary industry employs more than twice as many workers as the secondary industry, thus accounting for more than 60% of total workforce. However, the productivity of the tertiary industry has remained very low, in a sharp contrast with that of the secondary industry that is nearly the highest in the world. The Japanese healthcare services have many problems, e.g. a fast-growing medical costs beyond 27 billion yen (7% of the GNP), or manpower shortage in hospitals as shown by the number of amesthesiologists of 3 for 100,000 people (in contrast to 9 in the U.S.)A radical reform of hospital systems is needed for high-quality healthcare services. Effectiveness of management techniques practised in the secondary industry, including quality control and process performance analysis, is exemplified by a pharmacy with an automatic dispensing system that minimizes the risk of drug interactions in-duced by overdose, and a conveyor-based operation system in a Moscow hospital. New medical services are mentioned such as treatment of dementia, neuroimmunology, and homeopathy. Experimental information systems based on multimedia or satellite communication proliferate, but not a single comprehensive interhospital network has been implemented in Japan.