Using health forecasts made with the Mahalanobis distance from the results of health checkups over a two-year period, medical examination items were selected, an economic evaluation was carried out by a loss function, and the potential for reducing costs was verified. The functional limit △0, costA, lossA0, and distance tolerance △ were determined. As a result, from the value of Δ obtained by economic calculation of the loss function, it became evident that 1.5 was an appropriate threshold value for distinguishing healthy from unhealthy individ uals. This was also confirmed from the results of calculation of the standard S/N ratio. When threshold values were studied and examination items were selected on the basis of these results, one small enterprise was able to reduce its costs by 10 million yen, and the results suggested that healthy/unhealthy diagnoses could be made from health checkup data for two or three years without a medical examination by a doctor.
