Development of IT Based Management System for Health Support Program in Japan

In order to realize a healthy aged society, the Japanese government has established a new law for the health promotion in 2006. The new law will make “the specified health checkup and intervention program” for insureds over 40 years old obligatory for public health insurers from April, 2008. It is planned that the outcomes of this health promotion program will be reflected to monetary contribution of each insurer for the newly created health insurance scheme for the elderly. In order to adapt to this scheme, each insurer must have a capacity to monitor the compliance of insured and to analyze the claim data in oredr to establish appropriate strategeis. Considering the limited manpower of each insurer and the large volume of persons who need health education, it is indispensable to use IT system. For this perspective, we have developed the IT based management system for health support program. The base system is constructed on Cognos 8®, one of the most widely used OLAP software. The base system comprises of the three parts: data input and preparing the cubes, data mining, and reporting. The system supports the management of health education and monitoring. As in the USA, this kind of IT based health support system will be developed by the introduction of “the specified health checkup and intervention program” from April, 2008.