Status and perspective of hospital information systems in Japan

Questionnaire surveys were sent to hospital managers, designed to shape the policy for future hospital information systems in Japan. The answers show that many hospitals use dedicated management systems, especially for patien t registration and accounting, and personnel, food control, pharmacy and fi nancial departments, In many hospitals, order-entry systems for laboratory tests and prescriptions are well developed. Half of the hospitals have pati ent databases used for inquiries of basic patient information, history of o utpatient care and hospital care. The most obvious benefit is the reduction of office work, due to effective hospital information system. Many hospita l managers want to use the following sub systems in the future for automati c payment, wailing time display, patient records search, automatic prescrip tion verification, drug side-effect monitoring, and graphical display of pa tient record data.