TXP Medical Launches COVID-19 Information Sharing System for Tokushima Prefecture ~Supports the facilitation of hospitalization coordination operations for COVID-19 patients~

TXP Medical Co. Ltd.( headquarter : Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, Representative director :Tomohiro Sonoo, hereinafter "TXP Medical") will provide Tokushima Prefecture with the Tokushima COVID-19 Alert and Rescue Essential system (hereinafter "T-CARE system") for the purpose of visualizing information linkage among medical institutions, home and overnight care facilities, health centers and the Tokushima Prefectural Government Hospitalization Coordination Headquarters for patients infected with COVID-19.

Since 2017, TXP Medical has been offering Next Stage ER, an emergency medicine platform that integrates fragmented medical data under its corporate mission of "saving lives with medical data" to the emergency medical field.

TXP Medical has also implemented a website for development management and visualization of CRISIS, a critical illness COVID-19 database provided by the NPO Japan ECMOnet.

【Background】
In April of this year, Tokushima Prefecture experienced a rapid spread of infection to the extent that the number of infected persons in one month far exceeded the year-to-date total. In addition, the positive patients who were hospitalized or admitted due to the alpha strain became more severely ill more rapidly and at a higher rate than in the past, placing a greater burden on the medical facilities than the number of patients received.

In such a situation, it is important to share information on the distribution of patient symptoms accurately and promptly among the parties concerned, and to coordinate hospitalization based on a common understanding of the content of such information. However, since most of this work has traditionally been carried out by fax and telephone communication, necessary information sharing tended to be delayed when the workload of health centers and hospitalization coordination headquarters became tight due to the rapid spread of infection.

Furthermore, it is necessary to respond flexibly in accordance with the ever-changing medical system and institutional design for COVID-19, but it has been difficult to construct a highly practical system that meets these requirements using conventional waterfall system development.

【Expected Effects】
The T-CARE system will enable centralized management of patients with novel coronavirus infection and real-time visualization of the acceptance status of COVD-19 patients at medical institutions.

In the future, this information will be used to smoothly request hospitals to accept and control admissions and discharges based on more granular clinical information on individual patients. As an added benefit, it is expected to streamline the compilation of various clinical epidemiological information related to COVID-19, reduce the burden on medical and administrative personnel in the prefecture, and provide better medical care to patients.

In addition, the T-CARE system uses agile development to provide a system that can be quickly updated in response to daily changes in relevant regulations and systems related to the COVID-19.

Thus, it is expected to fulfill the on-site need to organize and computerize the cumbersome hospitalization coordination process, which until now has been carried out by paper and telephone.

【Daisuke Ito, Director, Department of Health and Welfare, Tokushima Prefecture】
In the case of COVID-19, multiple departments, including the public health center and the hospitalization coordination headquarters, are in charge of the administration alone, and the medical institutions and residential treatment facilities that receive inpatients as well as the medical association, nursing association, and pharmacist association, all of which play a major role.

Real-time information sharing and common understanding are essential in situations such as this, where close coordination and cooperation among many players is required, but this tended to be delayed under the heavy burden of dealing with infected patients in the field.

In this initiative, the interface has been customized in detail in response to feedback from the field, which contributes not only to information sharing but also to reducing the workload of the field, and we strongly hope that further version upgrades will make this a model case for DX in healthcare.

【Tomohiro Sonoo, President/Physician, TXP Medical Co. Ltd.】
The strain on medical resources following the spread of COVID-19 and the visualization of medical data in these situations are exactly the same challenges that emergency and disaster medicine is facing. We have been developing information communication platforms between emergency teams and hospitals in several regions and have applied our know-how to the development and provision of this system. We will strive to contribute to the nationwide response to the spread of the new coronavirus infection.