We developed a Patients Access Area Model (PAAM) using a Geographic information system (GIS). Owing to population aging, medical demand will rapidly increase. A demographic study projects the expected number of patients. The aim of this study is to estimate the demand and supply balance in the medical section. We set the PAAM for each 500 m mesh in accordance with the Japanese free access policy that is to say we can freely choose a hospital we prefer. We compared the projected number of patients and the number of available beds in a domestic hospital based on PAAM. This model estimated that approximately 3,400 patients would have to access a remote hospital in 2030. Using PAAM, we can estimate when and where over loading of inpatients occur, to search the better situation by changing the parameter. For demand evaluation, if patients cannot be distributed to the hospitals within an accessible area, we define the situation as “over-demand.” Therefore, although it was estimated that 3400 inpatients would not receive inpatient care in a northwest area region in the studied prefecture, most of the over-demand exists in densely populated regions along major traffic lines in 2030. Using this model, we can estimate the demand for local health resources more accurately. This method is very useful to plan geographical resource allocation in medical services.

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 This study was conducted to investigate the status of personal patient information data breaches at medical facilities involving the use of electronic media (including the Internet). News contents on website and newspaper articles dealing with data breaches were collected from information security websites and/or newspaper databases between 2008 and 2012. Data on 186 events (reported by mass media, etc.) were collected and the analysis results revealed the following findings:
 1) USB memory drives were the electronic media most frequently involved in data breaches (47.0%).
 2) Loss and burglary accounted for an overwhelming majority (84.4%) of all causes of data breaches.
 3) Data breaches occurred both inside and outside medical facilities. The main reasons provided for removing electronic media from hospitals resulting in data breaches were to research or learn, and to work outside the hospital.
 4) All types of healthcare professionals (including retired healthcare professionals) were responsible for security breaches, predominantly physicians.
 5) The percentage of data breaches resulting in information leaks was low (10.8%), but only 19.0% of the electronic media involved had been secured against information leaks or unauthorized usage.
 6) Information about illnesses of individual patients and personal information on 100 or more individuals were contained in more than half of the electronic media involved in data breaches each.
 7) Violations of the relevant hospital rules were found in 47.3% of data breaches.

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 The Automated Medication Packaging Machine packages prescribed tablet medicines with each single dose. However, when the medicines which are not put in the cabinet or half a tablet are prescribed, pharmacists have to use special tablet tray to allocate the medicine. We architect the tablet counting system for single dose package based on the special tablet tray operation data of the Automated Medication Packaging Machine. This system is developed to decrease the operation time of the special tablet tray. We changed the variety of medicines in the cabinet based on the data. Then, we compared the average number of times that the machine stopped per day, the usage rate of the special tablet tray per prescription and the supplementary rate into the cabinet to before changing. The result showed that the supplementary rate into the cabinet decreased significantly. The other two indexes decreased, too. In addition, an operation time for the special tablet tray was reduced 12.1 seconds per a prescription. These results show that this tablet counting system is useful to dispense prescribed tablet medicines.

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 Pharmacists provide various inpatient pharmaceutical services in the wards. Ideally, the number of pharmaceutical care services will increase; however, no system for supporting pharmaceutical care services has been implemented at Fukuoka Memorial Hospital, with the exception of terminals in the pharmaceutical sector. Therefore, there are limitations with respect to the location of records and business efficiency. Hence, we developed a pharmaceutical care recording support system to be used in the wards. This system maintains a temporary file server of hospital network data in the wards that pharmacists can use to enter pharmaceutical care records on forms created on a spreadsheet software program available in the market. Subsequently, the data are edited by the pharmaceutical sector. After implementing this system, the time required to create a pharmaceutical care record was significantly decreased and the number of pharmaceutical care services and time spent in the wards were significantly increased. Based on these results, we believe that this system is useful from the perspective of the inpatient pharmaceutical services provided by pharmacists. In addition, this system is applicable in other facilities because it was constructed using a commercially available software program.

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