Open Issues toward Successful Deployment of Electronic Health Information Exchange in Japan - Analysis of Regional Health Information Network in Kagawa Prefecture

Many governments in the world have promoted ICT deployment in the healthcare field, especially electronic healthcare information exchange system. Japanese government also promotes electronic healthcare information exchange system, but few systems remain to be successful. K-MIX (Kagawa Medical Internet eXchange) is an exception in the meaning of being a successful case. K-MIX has been functioning with success for more than eight years. However, K-MIX still has open issues to be solved toward a "true" regional health information exchange system. In this study, at first we define expected functions of regional health information exchange. Then we analyze a case of K-MIX in detail, and we state lacking parts of K-MIX. At last, we discuss open issues toward useful regional healthcare information exchange system.