A Trial Calculation of the Costs Incurred by the Absences of Agricultural Co-opEmployees in Aichi Prefecture due to Novel Influenza / 日本農村医学会雑誌

  With the spread of a novel H1N1 strain of influenza A around the world, the World Health Organization declared that the situation had entered the pandemic phase. In Japan, it had a major social impact, causing a great hit to the national economy. And there is every likelihood that the H1N1 influenza is going to break out a lot of people on the staff of the agricultural cooperatives in Aichi Prefecture, seriously affecting the activities of agricultural cooperatives too. Based on the amount of damage from the flu presumed by the Japanese government and various kinds of statistical material, we worked out how much the flu would cost the agricultural co-ops in the prefecture by infecting their employees and involved their family. At an absence rate of 20%, the lowest rate presupposed by the government, our calculation showed that the extra costs would amount to 740 million yen altogether. If the rete of abscense from work was given 40%, the largest estimate by the government, the costs rocketed to highly 1.48 billion yen. A check on the situation of individual co-ops revealed that some of the co-ops would burden an extra cost of well over 100 million yen. From these findings, we concluded that to minimize the effects of the flu appropriate, effective countermeasures have to be taken after sufficient information about the novel influenza virus was collected and analyzed carefully.

Implementation of Glucose Monitor System Following Introduction of Automated Ordering System / 日本農村医学会雑誌

Aichi Koseiren-Aihoku Hospital has implemented a New Glucose Monitoring System,using Precision PCx and its data management application, QC Manager (both Abbott Japan), for outpatient testing. It utilizes the advantages that have come with the introduction of the Ordering System. The new system has automated a great portion of glucose monitoring workflow and reduced the human work, and consequently, the potential risk of malfunction due to human errors. The system has been designed and developed to meet the following criteria; To be able to fully utilize the potential capabilities of the Ordering System (Barcode recognition of test samples); To be capable of transferring test results automatically to the Laboratory Information System without being handled by human; To improve the productivity as a whole system; To possess the precision and accuracy;and To be handled easily for bed-side use.