Photo/Illutration Screen samples of HER-SYS, which holds data, such as names, symptoms, infection routes, behavior history, and people who were in close contact with new patients (From health ministry documents)

An online system designed to streamline the compilation of data on novel coronavirus infections is failing largely because medical institutions find the entry process troublesome and prefer using faxes, a survey showed.

The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare set up the Health Center Real-time information-sharing System on COVID-19 (HER-SYS) to remove public health centers from the data entry process.

Under the previous system, medical institutions faxed information on new infections, including the names of patients and their symptoms, to public health centers. The centers would then send that data to municipal governments.

The ministry has instructed medical institutions to enter the information directly into HER-SYS, thereby easing the burden on public health centers and speeding up the data compilation process.

However, the ministry’s survey results on Sept. 28 showed that in 60 percent of municipalities, public health centers were still entering “almost all the data.”

The centers were handling “70 to 80 percent” of the data in 13 percent of the municipalities, “about 50 percent” of the information in another 13 percent of the municipalities, and “20 to 30 percent” in 9 percent of those surveyed.

Only 4 percent of the municipalities said medical institutions were entering almost all of the data on new infections into HER-SYS.

The survey was conducted from late August to early September on all 155 municipal governments that were told to use HER-SYS, and 113 of them responded.

Of the 318 medical institutions that responded to the survey, only 41 percent said they were entering data into HER-SYS.

Many of the institutions that did not use the online system said, “We do not feel any inconvenience in sending the data by paper.”

They also complained that there were too many items to enter into the system.

Municipal governments said public health centers have also complained about the number of data entries required, including information about people who tested negative for the virus.

After receiving such complaints, the health ministry prioritized certain information and said the entry of data about negative test results was unnecessary.

“We would like to reduce the burden on public health centers by creating manuals and holding training seminars to show medical institutions how to enter the data more easily,” a ministry official said.