The health ministry plans to issue the public with health handbooks that would catalog medical checkup data accumulated by each individual throughout his or her lifetime, ministry sources said Friday.
The move is aimed at cutting medical costs by reducing lifestyle illnesses, the sources said.
By the end of March, the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry hopes to compile guidelines on checkup items and accuracy, as well as on the format of the handbooks, they said.
In Japan, each individual can be subjected to a variety of health checks, the nature of which is dictated by age and other factors.
These checks include maternity checkups and examinations offered by schools, workplaces and local governments.
The fields, accuracy and methods used in the checks differ from place to place.
When individuals pass through different stages of their lives, such as when they graduate or change jobs, past checkup data are not carried over and are often not used.
The ministry hopes the handbooks will promote the early detection of symptoms and help prevent incidents such as allergy attacks and illnesses related to environmental factors such as work and pollution, the sources said.
In future, the ministry plans to put health-handbook information into individual IC cards, which may help doctors compile illness-prevention programs, they said.