Empirical analysis of the effect of eHealth to medical expendirures of lifestyle-related diseases

The objective of this research is to evaluate empirically the effectiveness of eHealth in Nishi-aizu Town, in Fukushima Prefecture, based on a mail survey to residents and their receipt data of National Health Insurance from November 2006 to February 2007. This paper mainly analyzes for what kind of diseases eHealth in this town is effective to reduce medical expenditures. Our main interests are focused on four lifestyle-related diseases, namely, heart diseases, high blood pressure, diabetes, and strokes. We apply a regression analysis to estimate the effect of eHealth to users who have these diseases and then calculate the monetary effect of eHealth in reduction of medical expenditures. As a result, eHealth is verified to provide the positive effect to heart diseases, high blood pressure, and diabetes among four diseases. These results are expected to strongly valid for establishment of evidence-based policy such as reimbursement from the medical insurance which we do not have yet in Japan.