As a part of revision of medical fee scheme in 2006, a new nursing distribution standard has been introduced to achieve proper distribution of nursing personnel for acute setting, which is so-called 7 : 1 nursing. The purpose of this research is to estimate cost and profit of the introduction of 7 : 1 nursing at a municipal hospital with 600 acute beds as a case. We also analysed the effect of the 7 : 1 nursing introduction on the hospital's overall financial management.
 We found that the 7 : 1 nursing generally put pressure on hospital profit due to increased human resource cost even though hospitals can earn profit by increasing basic inpatient fees. While a hospital introduces 7 : 1 nursing and recruits new graduates only to keep costs minimum, however, additional human resource cost will exceed the profit from the second year of the introduction.
 Municipal hospitals have roles to provide highly advanced medical treatment to the community as a regional center hospital, which require certain number of nurses with appropriate experience. Therefore, it is common for these hospitals to introduce the 7 : 1 nursing. This study suggested, when municipal hospitals introduce 7 : 1 nursing, that proper financial strategies should be needed.

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 We have developed a non-contact monitoring system to measure heart and respiratory rates, in aged care settings, using low-power 24 GHz microwave radars in accordance with the guideline for electromagnetic wave protection. Two Doppler radars are placed on a bed base under the mattress and detect the small vibration on the surface of a human body caused by respiratory movements and heartbeats. This system has the feature in which two radars output spectra are combined to improve the measurement accuracy. The main challenge was noise associated with irregular movements such as limb movement and turning over in bed mix with respiration and heart rate signals, making it difficult to separate and extract the target signal. A respiratory signal maximum value and a heart beat signal maximum value were set beforehand, and we introduced automatic gain control (AGC), a waveform compression method applied to radar output signals whereby each individual wave with the amplitude greater than the maximum value was adjusted to below the maximum value. Moreover, by judging output electric power strength of the radar signal we have distinguished the heart and respiratory rates of time zone with no body movement as data with high reliability or more.
 In addition, we evaluated actual operability for residents in a nursing home for seniors, the utility of the noncontact monitoring was confirmed. The early detection of changes in health condition and reduction of the primary caregiver's physical and mental load, is very important for aged care in the home or in institutions. Our unconstrained, safe, and noninvasive method is ideal as a new monitoring system for aged care settings.

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 Statistical tables have usually been classified by using many classes for meeting users' potential needs. The number of classes is often excessive for an individual user who has a need to extract particular data. The statistical tables are cross tabulated by two or more classes, but the format for the tables is not unified. Furthermore, there are tables that contain classes with hierarchical structures. For these reasons, it is not easy for a user to extract statistical values of classes from already published statistical tables. This paper presents a new notation method of the statistical tables. This method employs Wang's notation method and describes the paths from attributes of non-uniform format containing hierarchical classes to statistical values by XML. In order to confirm the effectiveness of this notation method, we carried out experiments using model tables and actual medical statistical tables which the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare of Japan had published. It is shown that the proposed notation worked well for easy extraction of particular data. A new system that changes the statistical tables into the proposed notation automatically, and that enables users to extract particular data from the changed statistical data interactively, is also developed.

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 We have adopted a platform virtualization technology as an operational environment for 30 computers that are providing server functions, in implementing hospital information systems. The platform virtualization is a technology that enables to provide multiple virtualized computers on a single physical computer. As multiple computers are integrated efficiently, it is expected to reduce initial costs and operational costs of information systems. We report the results of selection processes and cost analysis of virtualization technology. Advantages and problems of using virtualization technology in hospital information systems were discussed.

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 We endeavored to establish a computerized prescription checking system to ensure more well-defined checking on the electronic medical record system (EMRS) and the pharmacy subsystem with reducing workload in maintenances of medication master data base.
 Because we thought that the purpose was almost achieved, we evaluated the operation situation in these systems.
 By unifying managements of medication master data between EMRS and the pharmacy subsystem, we realized keeping consistency of medication master file in both systems.
 We developed original data bases for prescription checking and divided prescription checking into two steps, that is, shared between EMRS and the pharmacy subsystem.
 Furthermore, printing out essential information for checking on a prescription, the accuracy of pharmacists' prescription checking was really enhanced.
 As a result, we improved a prescription checking function without delaying response time.
 EMRS is considered as an effective medical safety management tool with a potential to improve patient safety, but introduction of these electronic systems without a carefully worked-out plan may cause clinical incidents.
 Therefore we have to evaluate these systems and always make efforts towards getting better electronic system. So we would like to contribute further to brushing up our prescription checking system to secure medical safety.

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