[Development of a Digitalized Child's Checkups Information System].

In Japan, health checkups for children take place from infancy through high school and play an important role in the maintenance and control of childhood/adolescent health. The anthropometric data obtained during these checkups are kept in health centers and schools and are also recorded in a mother's maternal and child health handbook, as well as on school health cards. These data are meaningful if they are utilized well and in an appropriate manner. They are particularly useful for the prevention of obesity-related conditions in adulthood, such as metabolic syndrome and diabetes mellitus. For this purpose, we have tried to establish a scanning system with an optical character recognition (OCR) function, which links data obtained during health checkups in infancy with that obtained in schools. In this system, handwritten characters on the records are scanned and processed using OCR. However, because many of the scanned characters are not read properly, we must wait for the improvement in the performance of the OCR function. In addition, we have developed Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, on which obesity-related indices, such as body mass index and relative body weight, are calculated. These sheets also provide functions that tabulate the frequencies of obesity in specific groups. Actively using these data and digitalized systems will not only contribute towards resolving physical health problems in children, but also decrease the risk of developing lifestyle-related diseases in adulthood.