Storing sensitive records in the cloud may have its own risks, but is that really worse than losing all your patients’ records? Yasuhiro Kobayashi reports what happened in Japan last year following the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami:
According to Miyagi Prefecture’s medical association, 163 facilities, or 90 percent of hospitals and clinics in the prefecture badly damaged in the disaster, lost their medical records.
When Shizugawa Hospital in Minami-Sanriku in the prefecture, which was destroyed by tsunami, resumed seeing patients at an evacuation center shortly after the disaster, about 300 to 400 patients a day sought treatment. The majority of them were suffering from chronic diseases such as diabetes.
Physician Masafumi Nishizawa, 40, said, “It was confusing because we had to rely on patients’ memories about what medicine they had been taking.”
In light of this, the medical association, Tohoku University and others have established the Miyagi Medical and Welfare Information Network, aiming at sharing records by forming information networks among medical institutions and care facilities.
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