Masatsugu Tsuji
New developments have been emerging in telemedicine in accordance with the development of ICTs. ICTs make it much easier to collect, accumulate, and share health and medical data among medical professionals and patients than ever before. Smartphones and sensors to measure and transmit health data by patients at home to clinic became available among patients and clinics. These are termed by online clinic and the new guideline in Japan on online clinic was issued in 2018, which was recognized as parts of implementing diagnosis, medical question, and dosage. Using online clinic, medical and health data of patients at home can be easily collected, utilized for treatment, and shared among not only medical institutions but also nursing homes and pharmacies. The utilization of health and medical data can be considered in the process of collecting, accumulating, sharing, analyzing, and applying for implementation. This paper aims to examine the followings: (i) how and in what purpose these data will be obtained and utilized; and (ii) what policies promote online clinic in the age of AI and digital transformation to solve problems such as an increase in medical expenditures related to chronic diseases, reduction of medical resources in less populated regions, overwork of medical staff, and so on. In the industry and business, the utilization of ICT such as cloud computing, big data, AI has been proceeding in a much wider and speedy way and creating new innovations aiming at Industry 4.0. Why medicine is lagged behind? When will Telemedicine 3.0 be realized?
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