Application of Information Technology to Develop the System for Solitary Death

Abstract

Recently, the decreasing birthrate and aging society has advanced along with the rapid development of medical technology in Japan. Many Japanese want to live at home with old age and the number of elderly people living alone also steadily increases. Solitary deaths of elderly people living alone become an issue in such situation and it is necessary to take measures to cope with the situation. Some products to prevent solitary deaths utilizing information technology have been released already in Japan. However, most of them are not widely used because maintenance or introduction costs are quite high. In this paper, we state the development of the medical record system equipped with a simple automatic inquiry function to manage the health of the elderly living alone, "Otassha Tsushin", and the mobile application to prevent solitary deaths, "Anshin", to distribute to elderly people living alone and their families and supporters.