Utilization of Healthcare data for Extension of healthy life expectancy (1/3)Data Utilization by ICT

By Kazuko Yuma, Chief Fellow

 Japan is one of the top ranking countries with average long life expectancy.

 The World Health Organization published the World Health Statistics 2016 where Japan is ranked as longest average life expectancy for males and females.

 During the increase in average life expectancy, “ the healthy life expectancy” are focused in many cases. The healthy life expectancy means a period where healthy life is maintained without having any health problems in daily life. In the the Annual Report for Ageing Society 2016 published by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW), it is shown that in the year 2013 the healthy life expectancy is 71.19 years and 74.21 years respectively for men and women, which are well below the average life expectancy.

Maintaining the quality of life (QOL)

 The difference in periods of average life expectancy and average healthy life expectancy means “Unhealthy Periods”. If the difference is larger, it means that we may lose physical and mental activities in the society and we may suffer from staying ill on the bed for the longer period. It gives the impression that we are ending our life against our will and expectation. The government is also suffering from the larger budget to cope with the medical and nursing care for longer period.

 If we shorten the difference in period between average life expectancy and average healthy life expectancy, we could stay away from the lower quality of life and we could expect smaller burden on social security expenses.

Prepare ourselves from the days when we are young and healthy

 It is very essential to make best utilization of data in the field of health, medical, and nursing care or long-term care if we try to extend the average healthy life expectancy. It is also essential to make earlier gathering and analysis of healthcare data of the days we were in good health. We may lose some of the important data if we only start the gathering when we are ill or under long-term care.

 In Japan, fortunately there is a large amount of healthy person’s data as companies are regulated to exercise health and medical check- up for their employees.

 It is, however, unfortunate that these data is not properly nor best utilized due to the facts that the digitalization is not well prepared, poor communications exists between concerned sections, and protection of personal data is too much paid attention.

Building 3 infrastructures for utilize healthcare data

 There is recently some movement to change the situation in Japan.

 In October last year the proposal was published by “Study Group to promote the introduction and deployment of ICT in the field of health and medical” under the initiative of MHLW. They are primarily proposing that infrastructure should be established with most advanced ICT innovation and the health and medical data and information should be best utilized. They are actually focusing on 3 infrastructures, namely (1) “Next Generation Health Management System (provisionally named)” to support the medical care in the front line with the recommendation of the best care based on the result of the analysis by AI (Artificial Intelligence) of big data of latest evidences and medical care data. (2) “PeOPLe (provisionally named), Open Information Platform, where the every possible medical information of the specific individual or patient from the days when the one was in good health and to the days when the one is ill or under long-term care is collected and shared by medical doctors or specialist. This open platform is also used by the individual to enhance self-care. (3) “Data Utilization Platform (provisionally named)” where the necessary data and information is collected and processed or adjusted (e.g. anonymization) for the purpose and needs from public, private and academic sectors.

 These infrastructures are planned to be in service by the year 2020.

 In January this year “Headquarters for the Reform and Promotion of Data Health” was formed in MHLW to promote smoothly the establishment of these 3 infrastructure systems. Cross-sectional utilization of data is now starting with a big step in the field of health, medical and nursing or long-term care.