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Principal Investigator

Objective

All the policies taken for the computerization of healthcare in Japan have been designed from the perspective of national financial crisis, not the needs of the medical practices. Consequently, the introduction of medical information technology has imposed the cost of impaired efficiency of their practices, and the benefits remained limited for most occasions. In addition, the failure in the innovation of information technology for healthcare has caused various costs in the government expenditure, without achieving any expected outcomes in the healthcare financing.

Our proposed study aims to reveal this cost-benefit imbalance in the computerization of healthcare at various levels, from the macroscopic to the microscopic level, through the cost-benefit analysis that has been used in evaluation of policies in other domains. We then seek to resolve the cost-benefit mismatch among the various actors affected by the computerization of healthcare through policy recommendations for lowering costs and increasing benefits to improve the imbalance.

Outline

Since the late 1990s, the government of Japan has been investing in electronic medical records to increase the popularity of these systems in clinical practice. In the 2000s, attempts were made to establish regional information networks to exchange patient information among these electronic hospital information systems. In the 2010s, tele-radiology services, for reading of CTs and MRI images, have become commoditized, and in the 2020s, innovations in artificial intelligence technology are impacting our daily practices in healthcare domain.

Up to this point, the government have taken various measures at great cost. However, the result has not yet been able to reduce medical costs or improve the quality of medical care as expected. Measures for the computerization of medical care were designed in response to the financial demands of medical care and have not responded to the needs of the medical field. As a result, the introduction of medical information technology has deteriorated the efficiency of medical care, while limiting the benefits of the technology in the medical fields.

Accordingly, this study aims to answer the question, ""Why are we not getting expected benefits from information technology in healthcare domain?"", by means of the cost-benefit analysis that has been used for policy evaluation in various fields. First of all, we quantify the benefits of information technology in addition to quantifying the various costs, including non-monetary costs, in medical practice and regional health information networks. Second, we will establish a standardized method for evaluating the costs and benefits of medical information technology. Third, we will elucidate the imbalance between costs and benefits of information technology in healthcare, and propose policies necessary to reduce the costs and increase the benefits to improve the imbalance. The proposed measures are expected to reduce the burden of the medical field and to improve the quality of medical care, through appropriate computerization of medical care, and improved cost-effectiveness of the technologies.