Surveys Aimed at General Citizens of the US and Japan About Their Attitudes Toward Electronic Medical Data Handling - 10 Years Change, Before and After Covid-19.

OBJECTIVES: To clarify the views of the general population of two countries (US and Japan), concerning handling of their medical records electronically, disclosure of the name of disease, secondary usage of information, compiling their records into a lifelong medical record, access to their medical records on the internet, questionnaire filling for delicate history, comprehensive consent for laboratory results, chart and genome profile, and AI use in diagnosis and explanation. METHODS: The authors contacted people nationwide in the United States at random via Random Digit Dialing (RDD) in 2008. Same questionnaire plus some new items were surveyed in 2022 by mail invited web entry. The authors had also surveyed people in Japan in 2007 and 2017 using same questionnaires sent by mail. RESULTS: In US, accessing own chart by internet became accepted (positive 52% to 61%) and popular in these 14 years. Japan showed small change, as regional medical record sharing is yet to come. About medical records in un-identifiable manner to be used for the purpose of medical error precautions, infectious disease measures and device/drug developments, in US, positive answers are constantly low, even for infectious disease prevention like CoVID-19. About preference to compile medical record into one file as a lifelong medical record, sharp contrast was observed. US people became favor of lifelong record (46% to 71%), while Japanese people decreased (76% to 57%). As for comprehensive consent, Japan positive answers are more than US for all situations, except if genome profile is included. US answers are almost same, even genome profile is included. About AI (artificial intelligence) application to healthcare, both US and Japan survey showed best preferred is "Doctor may use AI and everything, and explains in person". Japanese people largely prefer explanation in person, while US showed small preference.

Medical Image Sharing in Japan.

This paper reports the history, background including politics, current status of Japan's health imaging study and other information sharing. Its realization was slow until the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) started paying digital image storage at the same rate as films in 2008. Information sharing was initiated in early 2010s, which was before vendors became ready for Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) cross-enterprise document sharing (XDS), with the result that most of 34 large regional sharing systems are in non-standardized protocol. One standardized example is the Hamamatsu area where inexpensive online PDI (portable data for imaging) was introduced.

Legionella pneumonia immediately after recovery from COVID-19.

We experienced a patient with Legionella pneumonia developing immediately after discharge from COVID-19 recovery. Antibiotic treatment was successful. The source of Legiolella infection was proven to be bathtub water in this case. It is very important to accurately detect pathogens, particularly in the time of pandemics such as COVID-19.