### c. Quantitative benefits of MySOS, Join, and Team

When general hospitals, central hospitals, and university hospitals can all share information, it will be possible to reduce the number of duplicate CT scans, MRIs, and blood tests caused by hospital transfers, which, in turn, will speed up medical examinations and reduce medical costs. The Jikei University School of Medicine's affiliated hospital, since deploying Join, has reduced the total medical expenses per stroke patient by 60,000 yen a year.

## (2) Distributed management of personal data

### a. Overview of distributed management of personal data (personal life repositories)

Sharing patient information between medical institutions and care providers is necessary to implement community medicine collaborations that assist patients (care receivers) by having medical institutions and care providers work in tandem. Professor Koichi Hashida of the University of Tokyo points out 3 problems with sharing patient information: (1) the high costs associated with obtaining patient consent when exchanging the patient's personal data; (2) since personal information collected from many providers is centrally managed, the damages from security breaches would be enormous, as would the costs for security measures; and (3) it is problematic for competing providers to exchange data with each other. Professor Hashida advocates for personal life repositories (PLRs), in which care receivers manage their own personal data from their smartphone or other device, to solve these problems. PLR is a scheme that distributes the management of information to individuals. Care receivers' personal data is encrypted and stored on devices and the cloud. Personal data can then be shared when necessary to specific parties under the care and control of the care receiver (Figure 3-3-1-4). For example, the care receiver records with a PLR app his or her daily activities and medication status and can share that information with doctors when being examined at a medical institution for appropriate and safe diagnoses and treatments (Figure 3-3-1-5).

Distributed management schemes like PLR are attracting attention because they meet various requirements on data application scalability, security, and costs.

### b. Characteristics and advantages of using smartphones and the cloud

The first characteristic of managing information with smartphone apps is keeping operational costs low, because existing cloud services can be used for free to store data. The second characteristic is the potential to lower the risk of information leaks.

Another advantage Professor Hashida cites is the ability to cut providers' management costs, since direct exchanges of personal information between providers will no longer be necessary if there is broad acceptance of schemes where patients perform the sharing of personal

Figure 3-3-1-3 Image of information coordination between hospitals (example of a stroke)

(Source) Materials provided from the Jikei University School of Medicine

Figure 3-3-1-4 Image of distributed management of patient information

Individuals manage their personal information on a distributed basis and provide it when necessary to providers or other individuals