The “Drug Information Offering System” (http://www.pharmasys.gr.jp/, available since May 31, 1999) is a system that supplements the conventional information sources for those involved in medical services and employed at medical facilities (such as physicians and pharmacists [those affiliated with hospitals and pharmacies related to health insurance systems]). If viewed from another angle, the system may be regarded as a library that specializes in drug information. One may assume that a new system has been created where electronic information is available, in addition to that on conventional media (such as in printed form). The use of the Internet means accurate and rapid dissemination of information uniformly without favoring any specific geographic areas.

 At present, there is no standard set of diagnostic terms in Japan and this causes a problem that the electronic patient data from different hospitals are not compatible. The most important requirement for standard set of diagnosis terms is that different expressions with the almost the same meaning are grouped under the lead term. The medical information system development center is now developing such standard set.

 The visual resources available for education and research of medical genetics are not yet enough. In addition, little information on basic knowledge of medical genetics can be acquired from the internet. We therefore, developed a new world wide web site explaining chromosomal aberrations, human genetics and gene therapy written both in Japanese and in English. It includes many pictures and some animation. All graphical resources were originally made to avoid any possible infringement of copyright. The Japanese web site was linked to other web sites of genetic diseases. After releasing our web site, we received approximately 200 requests to use the resources for lectures or genetic counseling.

 Using those resources, we also made multimedia files for lectures on human genetics. The files are not only presented in lectures for medical students but also shared on the internal server in our university. By accessing the server, students are able to obtain transcripts of the lectures at will.

 URL: http://www.tokyo-med.ac.jp/genet/index-e.htm/

 Artificial Chemistry is a new research field of Complex System and Artificial life. We have proposed and investigated an abstract chemical system, Abstract Rewriting System on MultiSets (ARMS). In the system, molecules correspond to “symbols” and they react to each other according to reaction rules which are defined in advance. We confirmed that it can simulate phenomenon that we will find in real bio-chemical reactions such as “Belouzov-Zhabotinsky reaction (BZ-reaction)” (BZ-reaction is spontaneous chemical oscillation, which is considered as one of the basic mechanisms in bio-chemical system). We also investigated the population dynamics of such a tritrophic interaction using ARMS. We also investigated the population dynamics of a tritrophic system consisting of plants, herbivorous mites and carnivorous natural enemies of herbivores using ARMS. In ARMS model, we regarded the tritrophic interaction as chemical reactions of four reagents (plants, herbivores, carnivores and herbivore-induced plant volatiles). The intensities of interactions between these individuals correspond to the reaction speed in the ARMS model. We discuss the function of herbivore-induced plant volatiles in tritrophic context.

 Structured healthcare terminology is one of the most important bases of EPR system. Standard terminology should respond to several basic requirements, which are non-redundancy, non-ambiguity, consistency, etc. Actual terminologies, however, hardly satisfy these requirements. In order to harmonize the formal requirements and practical usage, authors proposed a system based on Atom dictionary that contain prior representations of basic concepts and synonyms with domain classification. It has also, normalized terminology, quotation index, and tools of parsing and composing. This model can provide an easier process for editing standard healthcare terminology without significant consideration on semantic network, which can be given by original reference terminologies. It will offer users better accessibility to standard terminology. This paper introduce the structure of the system and reports the results of two applications on this idea to automatic diagnostic representations to ICD-10 and Japanese interpretation of SNOMED.

 We have developed a web education system (Web-ED) to assist an instruction of information literacy for medical and pharmacy students. Web-ED facilitates a computer lecture by web server. Students are able to send examination answers and data files of application software to Web-ED server computer from own personal computer (PC) via Web-ED web page. We are able to check the answer and the file in the database at any time. Web-ED was constructed on a PC with free software, which are Linux (OS), Apache (web server), PostgreSQL (database) and a scripting language PHP3.0 to generate dynamic web page. Furthermore, the source code and the construction manual of Web-ED are opened to public by web page, users are able to customize for own environment.

 There was some problems in the article “Security of Nursing Care Information by Steganography Technology” on vol. 20: 135–142. Problems consist of security, privacy, and unification of files. The purpose of the article can achieve by combination of the encryption and archiving technology. On the other hand, The Steganography is a technique to make text message imperceptible to human. One should show the dummy image to others consciously. A few applications in the medical field are presented.