Mitsubishi Electric Develops Lifestyle-Based Disease Monitoring Network System

Mitsubishi Electric Corporation has developed a lifestyle-based disease monitoring network system that will serve to expand the company's business in the home health care market.

As a health promotion measure for our aging society, this system will become an important factor in preventing and suppressing the progress of lifestyle-based diseases. The system was developed in cooperation with Nihon Colin Co., Ltd. (Masatoshi Shinoda, president).

The new system comprises a sensor that accurately measures blood pressure on a daily basis. A communications network (LAN, ISDN, PHS) and data servers, then enables diagnosticians, company physicians and health care personnel to monitor trends in blood pressure fluctuation. This in turn will prevent diseases caused by hypertension of which the patient is normally unaware, such as heart disease, cerebro-vascular disease and renal disease. It is also expected to be effective in reducing health insurance costs and health care costs by contributing to the prevention of the sudden death of hard-working company personnel and by aiding daily health management.

Main Features

This newly developed system allows the use of magnetic cards to store and input data on individuals. It is also equipped with a reasoning system that records the blood pressure data of each individual, analyzes the trend of blood pressure fluctuations based on the data stored on the cards and selects comments according to the characteristics of the data. Several hundred of these comments have been prepared. Thus, when the blood pressure of an individual is measured, a comment such as "Your blood pressure is high compared with the average blood pressure of people your age, so be careful concerning daily activities, exercise and eating," will be printed out, together with the measured data. This system provides the following benefits:

1. Increases the awareness of individuals concerning health management.

2. Enables detailed comments tailored to individuals whose blood pressure is becoming high.

3. Helps people develop the habit of being more aware of their own serious illnesses and of sudden changes in their physical conditions.

4. Enables individual consultations concerning lifestyle-based diseases even in remote areas by using intranets or the Internet. For example, blood pressure can be measured at home or on the job and comments can be received immediately from the family or company physician.

5. As the comments can be changed from the center, comments and advice may easily be adapted to the particular characteristics of the data transmitted from each place of operation.

Future Development

1. The new system is slated to be distributed to businesses, health insurance unions and local government bodies.

2. In the future, a comprehensive health management system will be realized by linking the long-term accumulation of data on illnesses with diagnostic data.

3. A remote medical system including home medical terminals is also envisioned for the future.

Development Background

The average age of the business population of Japan is gradually creeping upward each year. At the same time, the nature of work is changing from labor-intensive to intellectual production. In addition, stress levels seem to be increasing and there have been many recent cases of sudden deaths within companies. Lifestyle-based diseases, which first become noticeable when people are in their thirties, are quietly advanced due to excesses at work. Lifestyle-based diseases suddenly appear as the second most serious problems in medical expenses for those in their forties, while they are by far the highest for those in their fifties and over.

In Japan, one person in six has high blood pressure, which is the cause of lifestyle-based diseases, and the percentage of people with this condition is expected to continue to grow in the future. Most people with the condition are not aware that they have high blood pressure, which is feared as a silent killer, and hypertension is also an important risk factor in cerebro-vascular disease, heart disease and renal disease. If hypertension is left untreated, the probability that it will contribute to the development of one or more of these diseases gradually increases. The condition also leads to hardening of the arteries and in some cases may result in sudden death.

Countermeasures against lifestyle-based diseases are extremely important from the viewpoint of promoting public health and reducing health care costs.

For businesses as well, working to prevent the contraction of diseases and sudden deaths among hard-working employees is expected to play a role in enhancing the soundness of national health protection. The first step in the prevention of high blood pressure is to develop the habit of correctly measuring one's own blood pressure on a daily basis and of being aware of the trend of one's blood pressure fluctuations.

System Configuration

- Automatic oscillometric-type sphygmomanometer

- Magnetic card system (no. of persons registered: 80/unit; JIS Type 2)

- Windows NT compatible server/client system

Development Details

This system was developed by changing to a device that can chart the height, weight and blood pressure of an individual as a time series, combining this information with data on the lifestyles of individuals (consumption of alcoholic beverages, smoking, date of birth, etc., are recorded on magnetic cards), incorporating a device to estimate the blood pressure symptoms of subjects, developing a sphygmomanometer that issues comments aimed at the prevention of high blood pressure, adding servers for the long-term storage of individuals' data and management of individuals' health, adding client terminals that provide users with comments from company physicians, nurses, nutritionists, and other health care personnel, and adding communications devices to connect all of the other components of the system into a single network.