Nagasaki hospital scans 50,000 A-bomb patient records

NAGASAKI–A hospital here has digitized the medical records of more than 50,000 people who survived the atomic bombing of the city in 1945.

The Japanese Red Cross Nagasaki Genbaku Hospital has scanned the paper records of outpatients who used the hospital from 1958-2009, most of them hibakusha. It is currently doing the same for inpatient records.

“These documents and materials on the atomic bomb survivors are so precious,” said Tadaomi Aikawa, a doctor involved in the digitization project. “They are a piece of world heritage. … We have to pass them on to posterity.”

Nagasaki Genbaku Hospital and other bodies are considering using the archive for big-data analysis, including correlating the records with those of another database in the city.

Located in the city’s Morimachi district, Genbaku Hospital is named for the atomic bomb (“genbaku” in Japanese). It opened in 1958, providing consultations, treatment and other services.

The hospital moved to a new location in stages through 2020. Preparations for the move prompted officials to do something about the piles of paper records stashed in the building’s basement.

They decided to digitize outpatient charts and other documents prior to 2009, the year when the hospital went over to electronic records. The records would have stretched for 3.2 kilometers if placed in a line.

“Successive generations of doctors have carefully preserved these patient charts out of enthusiasm for the health care of atomic bomb survivors,” said Aikawa, 82.

10 YEARS OF WORK 

Hospital officials asked the health ministry for help in preserving the records.

Digitization and database work began in fiscal 2017 under commission from the ministry. It was expected to take 10 years with an annual budget of 10 million yen ($67,000).

Workers opened paper charts bound in hard covers and removed documents from patient folders for imaging. They also digitized tissue data such as biopsy records.

The scanned data is held within the hospital’s centralized management system.

The digitization of outpatient records was completed in June last year. Work on inpatient records is still ongoing but may wrap up toward the end of 2027, officials said. Inpatient records include observations about patients held in wards overnight.

POTENTIAL FOR RESEARCH

The records include not only a great many hibakusha but also some patients who were not present in the city at the time of the bombing. This offers great potential for research, hospital officials said.

It could be used, for example, to compare health trends in people who lived among the radioactive fallout and those who didn’t.

Currently, comparative studies of this sort are using data only from 2000 through 2024. The newly digitized records would allow researchers to look at other correlations, such as disease prevalence according to distance from ground zero and age at the time of exposure.

“In the future, the records could help reveal, for example, differences in the late conditions of atomic bombing survivors that are not limited to cancer alone,” said Hideki Taniguchi, the director of Genbaku Hospital. “The availability of clinical data on atomic bombing survivors is extremely helpful for uncovering new insights.”

Elsewhere, Nagasaki University’s Atomic Bomb Disease Institute has created an Atomic Bomb Survivor Database, which covers data on atomic bombing survivors from 1970 onward.

The ABDI worked with parties including the prefectural and city authorities of Nagasaki to obtain information on about 160,000 people in Nagasaki Prefecture who possess an Atomic Bomb Survivor’s Certificate issued by the central government. The count includes those who have since died.

The ABDI also contains the results of regular health checkups for hibakusha and information based on the prefectural government’s cancer registration system.

Officials from the hospital and Nagasaki University have been discussing how the newly digitized data might be used.

The ABDI records could be correlated with Genbaku Hospital’s patient information.

Combining the two databases could help identify associations between noncancerous diseases and exposure to the atomic bomb, a university official said.