Fuji Xerox’s Integrated Medical Record Management System Starts Operations in Takeda General Hospital in Fukushima

Enables to View All Medical Records by Linking Paper and Electronic Forms Contributing to Enhancing Medical Service Efficiency and Quality


TOKYO — Fuji Xerox Co., Ltd. introduced its integrated medical record management system that handles both paper and electronic formats at Takeda General Hospital in Fukushima, Japan. The system commenced operations in the hospital’s new General Medical Center that opened on October 1.

Accepting approximately 250,000 outpatients each year and providing 837 beds, Takeda General Hospital is regarded as one of the core hospitals for the local medical service reinvigoration plan in the Aizu and Minami Aizu areas of Fukushima Prefecture. To coincide with the opening of the General Medical Center, Fuji Xerox built a system for the hospital to manage increasing number of medical records in both paper and electronic formats in a comprehensive manner utilizing its software, Apeos PEMaster ProRecord Medical.

Requirements in medical institutions are wide ranging; the need to have an overall understanding of each patient’s medical history including the patient’s past diagnoses, examinations, treatments, operations, and post-treatment/operation progress, as well as the need to improve performances of medical teams by timely sharing such archived information across departments. Meanwhile, such medical records must be legally, securely stored for a set amount of time.

At Takeda General Hospital, approximately 10,000 records are created every day. These include paper documents that require stamps and signatures, reports generated by various systems, and patient referral documents from other hospitals. However, there is no system that can integrally manage existing medical records in various formats, therefore the hospital has been challenged by the workload to manage and search information.

To resolve the issues, Fuji Xerox has unified a range of documents used in the hospital--including paper-based diagnosis records, print outs from departmental and medical examination systems, and electronic documents created by various types of applications, --into generic document formats, such as PDF and DocuWorksNote1, enabling all these data items to be viewed on the terminals used in the hospital. Apeos PEMaster ProRecord Medical features flexible linkage with existing in-hospital systems and the mission-critical system. Also it has a linkage with the electronic medical chart system that the hospital currently uses; therefore users can view those documents together with related medical records.

Along with the introduction of the Integrated Medical Record Management System, Fuji Xerox also established a scanning center within the General Medical Center, where paper documents can be converted into an electronic format. More than 1,300 sheets can be processed in the facility per day, including referral letters, letters of consent and medical interview sheets. The readability of the scanned items and linkages with the patient information are checked before registering to the system.

“With Apeos PEMaster ProRecord Medical, we can now handle diverse types of medical records that cannot be covered by electronic charts in an integrated manner,” said Tamio Tose, director of Planning and Management Division, The Takeda General Hospital Foundation. "The new system’s superior data search and list display functions allow us to easily overview the entire diagnostic process. Going forward, we expect that this system will help us build a local information sharing system to facilitate cooperation with other medical institutions.

Takeda General Hospital regards Fuji Xerox’s Integrated Medical Record Management System as a backup system to store their medical records over a long period of time as well as the infrastructure to effectively share medical information with other hospitals and clinics aiming for local healthcare cooperation in the future. Fuji Xerox continues to contribute in improving medical quality and safety, and promoting medical cooperation through further enhancing in-hospital medical system linkage and secondary usage of the medical records.

Apeos PEMaster ProRecord Medical

Fuji Xerox has accumulated the technologies and expertise required for managing office documents in its long history. Applying these skills and knowledge in the medical field, the company spent more than three years studying medical record management methods that can be utilized in frontline medical workplaces. After a series of field trials, the company developed a system that effectively integrates and manages various medical records in a comprehensive manner enabling long-term viewing of these records. Fuji Xerox aims to realize the Document Archiving and Communication System (DACS)Note2, which is the document-based medical record management concept.

Note1
Fuji Xerox’s document handling software that centrally manages and utilizes electronic documents and scanned paper-based documents on computers.
Note2
Document Archiving and Communication System: The system aims to archive, manage, and make permanently accessible all the records related to an individual patient, regardless of the type of media or system used to create them, achieving complete coverage of all such records-without any exceptions. This system is based on the concept advocated by, by the Department of integrated Medicine, Medical Information at Osaka University Hospital.

Note:
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