Kiyomu Ishikawa

The effect of obesity on ventilatory response and anaerobic threshold during exercise

To facilitate making the physical fitness programs for obesity control, we investigated the effects of obesity on the ventilatory response during exercise and exercise tolerance. One hundred eighteen adults were divided into a normal group and fatty group by percentage of body fat. Each subject performed a submaximal exercise test under the gas-exchange measurement. The fatty group was inferior to the normal group in exercise tolerance. The respiratory mode, during exercise, in the fatty group was characterized by higher respiratory rate and less tidal volume compared with the normal group. This mode may result in increased dead space and therefore unavailable ventilation capacity. These data suggest that the characteristic respiratory mode in the fatty group was a factor in the lower exercise tolerance.

Health data use and protection policy; based on differences by cultural and social environment

On April 22, 1999, the Japanese Ministry of Health and Welfare proposed electronic preservation of all clinical records. Simultaneously, deliberations on legislation on data disclosure and privacy protection were held. To promote these movements, electronic use of Personal Health Data (PHD) is indispensable, and the system development is on its way to meet rising demands. Indigenous Japanese did not have a word to describe the concept of privacy. It was only in the 1960s when we became aware of that. In this article, the protection policy for data use will be discussed from a Japanese perspective compared with those in other nations, giving an example of the hospital management system under construction at the Hiroshima University Hospital.

Overall conclusions and recommendations

It was recognised that the application of IT in health care is evolving rapidly. Major developments are: 1. the support of the primary process with the Electronic Patient Record (EPR) as focal point together with order management and protocols/nursing care plans; 2. increasing exchange of data beyond the walls of the institution (shared care, transmural care); 3. the growing use of the Internet; 4. introduction of multimedia functionality in the health information systems. These developments have a significant impact on the security provisions required, so attention for security was unanimously judged to be more necessary than ever. 2. Access to patient’s data

The recommendations from the 2009 SiHIS working conference in Hiroshima—Issues on trustworthiness of health information and patient safety

Held on 21st to 23rd November 2009 in Hiroshima, the SiHIS working conference aimed at finding solutions to approach to an idealistic society where (1) the individual can trust information with full understanding and responsibility, (2) the individual can allow the use of information backed by sound legitimated environment, (3) information can play its role for better healthcare and the improvement of medicine. The purpose of this paper is to propose recommendations from this working conference.

A Study on a Home Health Care Support Information System for Health Evaluation

The need for home health care has been increasing in Japan and the application of various techniques such as medical informatics are desired to support home health care services. Therefore, we developed an information system for health evaluation of the elderly including patients at home by applying a multifunctional telephone set and an IC memory card, by which complaints, symptoms, and conditions by them can be collected, recorded, and transmitted to medical facilities. We also conducted an experiment for trial use of the system with the cooperation of elderly female volunteers. It was recognized that the elderly volunteers could operate the system with the help of public health nurses and their health information could be collected by the system. Although the developed system has some problems, it was suggested that the system would be useful for the support of health evaluation of the elderly at home.

Insecurity of the ECG interpretation data as a health mass screening: the serial reliability evaluation study

To evaluate the reliability of the interpretations of ECG data which have been stored yearly as health mass screening data between 1982 and 1991 in an industry, we recently analyzed the data variation of 10,546 samples. So as not to ignore the longitudinal health management, we are going to reevaluate the clinical significance of the ECG interpretation data, which were stored as an item of health mass screening.

A study on the development of a filing system for funduscopic images with a personal computer for twin AMHTS

A filing system for ocular fundscopic image data was developed by using a personal computer for the Twin AMHTS. The development of the system was tried as one of the data transfer system including image data between two similar AMHTSs named the Twin AMHTS through the information network system. The filing system is capable of storing 26782 data of ophthalmoscopic pictures with a data compression mode by using a magneto-optical disk (MOD) whose storage capacity of both sides is 616 MB. It takes no long time for retrieval and display of the image data in the filing system. Good quality of compression and decompression obtained and reproducibility of the ocular fundus picture is favorable regardless of normal or abnormal cases. As a result, it is suggested that the developed system has practical utility although it requires more improvement.