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ID 115363
Title Alternative
The hardware and software supporting emergency medical care at Tokushima Prefectural Kaifu hospital
海部病院の救急医療を支えるハードとソフト
Author
Kageji, Teruyoshi Tokushima Prefectural Kaifu Hospital KAKEN Search Researchers
Keywords
Telemedicine
Depopulates area
Emergency medical care
Sustainable medical care
Content Type
Journal Article
Description
In depopulated areas in Japan, it has been hard to maintain the high quality of emergency medical care system due to a lack of resident medical doctors. On the other hand, the few available clinicians work overtime to handle the medical burden, leading to social problems in Japan, especially in medical emergencies like stroke and acute myocardial infarction. To reduce the burden on healthcare personnel and promote a sustainable high-quality of emergency medical care system, we have introduced a telemedicine system known as “k-support” system at Kaifu hospital. The telemedicine system uses smartphones and Internet, and can provide medical radiological images such as CT(computerized tomography)and MRI(magnetic resonance imaging)to the smartphones of doctors employed full-time at the Tokushima Prefectural Kaifu hospital. Rapid dissemination of medical data ensures that the panel of doctors can discuss the diagnosis and treatment planning of emergency patients almost immediately. Using the telemedicine system, duty doctors can consult other doctors and can then manage the patients themselves without waiting for the arrival of on-call doctors.
We have used the k-support system in 239 emergency patients from February 2018 to December2019. The majority of the cases(98%)were during hours of reduced staff availability, i. e. during the night or during holidays. The k-support system was used in neurosurgical, orthopedic, and medical diseases with proportions51%,39% and 8% respectively. The years of experience of doctors using the k-support system varied from under10years(46%), to10-20years(13%), and to over 20 years(29%). After consultation using the k-support system, on-call doctors had to physically go to the hospital in only18% of the cases―the duty doctor could treat the patients in82 % of the cases, without requiring additional intervention.
Equating the k-support telemedicine system to hardware, and cooperation and consultation between doctors using the system to software, we believe that a synergistic combination between the two is essential for setting up a sustainable emergency care system, which in turn would reduce the work burden of doctors in a depopulated area.
Journal Title
Shikoku Acta Medica
ISSN
00373699
NCID
AN00102041
Publisher
徳島医学会
Volume
76
Issue
3-4
Start Page
165
End Page
172
Sort Key
165
Published Date
2020-08-25
FullText File
language
jpn
TextVersion
Publisher
departments
University Hospital