Health insurance claims data were almost fully computerized. The focus of interest has shifted from computerization to effective utilization of accumulated data. Unfortunately, however, the data format of health insurance claims remains as it was when health insurance claims were processed manually in paper form. Such obsolete data format has been a hindrance to effective utilization of the data. We examined the possibility to reform the present data format to better suit for data analysis. First, we propose a common format unifying medical, dental, pharmaceutical and DPC claims with each record including a patient ID as well as a provision date. Secondly, we propose a one-record format for clinical procedures, which consists of multiple records covering both procedure codes and extra-charge codes. In case of pharmaceutical claims, the dispensing data can be improved by expressing in drug units. Through our proposed revision of health insurance claims data format, the data will be suitable for effective analysis. This will enable the effective use of health insurance claims data for the fields already practiced in Korea. Some of Koreans' achievements such as measurement of health care quality as well as medical researches published in major international journals.

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 Hospitals rely heavily on infusion pump and syringe pumps, which are actively and widely moved around the hospital to meet patient needs. These pumps are managed by the hospital's Medical Engineering (ME) center and must be maintained periodically to guarantee the reliability and safety of the equipment. However, in the busy environment of hospitals, some of these pumps can get misplaced or lost. If the pumps are not regularly inspected and serviced, patients' lives can ultimately be placed at risk. Thus, it is of grave importance that the whereabouts of these pumps be known at all time by the ME center. As a means of monitoring the location of this equipment, the authors devised a UHF band passive RFID tag system. With this RFID system, the location of the pumps can be tracked automatically with little effort from staff. Several experiments were conducted to inspect the reliability of the system, using the Sapporo Medical School Hospital as the venue for the experiment. From the results of the experiments, the locations of the RFID tagged pumps were identified accurately and easily within the tested areas of the hospital, confirming the feasibility and the practicality of the system for hospital use.

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 The purpose of this article is to introduce a new computer application designed to help medical personnel to monitor the spread of infectious diseases in Japan. Spatiotemporal analysis of disease activity is not only good for prevention of infectious disease outbreaks, but it is also good for control of outbreaks of infectious diseases. The Japanese infectious disease surveillance scheme was established to detect infectious disease outbreaks during their early stages. However, because current surveillance reports are presented as tabular formatted numerical data and simple charts, it is difficult to grasp a trend of infectious disease morbidity all over the country and/or a transmission between neighboring areas. We have developed a web-based data visualization system that makes surveillance data more comprehensible for medical personnel. The system's database currently contains weekly reports of influenza and 11 pediatric infectious diseases in the 47 Japanese prefectures from 2000 to the present, which amounts to approximately 300,000 cases. The main feature of the system is that it automatically generates animations or graphic images for visualizing spatiotemporal patterns of infectious diseases by using a Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) and a Hypertext Markup Language Version 5 (HTML5) according to user's requirements.

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 The Japanese government has been considering introducing a personal information management system, which makes it possible for people to manage their social service records on an individual basis. In this paper, we propose a prescription and individual medication history management system by applying the personal information management system which would be established by the Japanese government as a secure storage for individual information. The proposed system has functions to record and refer the history of prescription, dispensing and total dosing quantity. This information can be presented to medical doctors and effectively used for the patient health management. Moreover, the system can check drug interactions and redundant medication by comparing prescription data with the medication history stored in the personal information management system. We developed a demonstration system by incorporating some kinds of security techniques such as smart card, data enciphering, dynamic virtual private network and so on. With the trial use of the developed system by a medical doctor and a pharmacist, we confirmed the effectiveness of the proposed system in clinical practice.

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 Currently, the use of the internet is rapidly increasing, and thus, patients and their families have greater access to information on diseases and their cure. However, the credibility of such information has not been examined. This study aimed to examine the credibility of the websites that contained information on acute pain after abdominal operations.
 Of 75 websites that contained information about postoperative pain following laparotomy, four main topics (disclosure of basic information, contents, communication, and privacy) of the e-Health Code of Ethics 2.0 were evaluated on a scale of one to three, and results were analyzed using simple tabulation for each website; websites were classified as follows: general websites, personal websites, blogs, and bulletin boards.
 Although most bulletin boards disclosed basic information, the other types of websites did not do this adequately. Less than 50% of all types of websites disclosed basic information about contents and communication providers. In total, 45% of general websites ensured the objectivity, accuracy, and validity of the standard of medical information provided on the website, but only a few of the other types of websites ensured this. The acquirer and administrator for personal information was included in 50% or more of general websites and blogs but only in less than 10% of bulletin boards.

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