New uses for computer in medical education, clinical practice, and patient safety in the US and Japan

There has been a rapid expansion of computer use in medicine recently in the US and Japan. The reasons are availability of high speed and wireless connections, decreasing cost, demands for increased quality of care and documentation, and improving medical education. On the other hand, there are disadvantages which are extra time and effort needed, vulnerability to viruses, breaches of patient confidentiality, and high cost at start-up. One way to decide if the advantages of computers in medicine overcome the disadvantages to show physicians computer programs that may be useful to them. There are many such programs in Japanese as well as in English which are discussed in this paper. A major difference between the US and Japan is the high use of personalized digital assistants (PDAs) by US physicians as compared to Japanese physicians. PDAs can decrease medical errors due to rapid information access while improving efficiency. Although the market for the PDAs is currently decreasing in Japan, the coming merger of the cell phone and the PDA into the “smart phone” is likely to stimulate Japanese physicians’ interest in PDAs for medical use, especially considering the widespread popularity of cellular phones in Japan.