In late 2009, drastic budget cuts were recommended by a new cabinet-level government advisory unit. As part of these budget cuts, the Second Working Group of the Government Revitalization Unit moved to exclude Kampo medicines (traditional Japanese medicines) from reimbursement under the National Health Insurance program on Nov.11. A petition opposing the reform was initiated by Kampo physicians and patients on Nov.20. Three weeks later, 924,808 signatures had been collected and submitted to the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare, and cancellation of the reform was announced on Dec.25. A total of 95,362 signatures were gathered on the web (http://kampo.umin.jp/). I report here an outline of signature-collecting campaign on the internet.

In late 2009, drastic budget cuts were recommended by a new cabinet-level government advisory unit. As part of these budget cuts, the Second Working Group of the Government Revitalization Unit moved to exclude Kampo medicines (traditional Japanese medicines) from reimbursement under the National Health Insurance program on Nov.11. A petition opposing the reform was initiated by Kampo physicians and patients on Nov.20. Three weeks later, 924,808 signatures had been collected and submitted to the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare, and cancellation of the reform was announced on Dec.25. A total of 95,362 signatures were gathered on the web (http://kampo.umin.jp/). I report here an outline of signature-collecting campaign on the internet.

A 25-question “Nationwide Kampo Web Test” was conducted to evaluate the basic knowledge and diagnostic ability of Kampo among medical professionals nationwide. We analyzed the scores of all 608 examinees (241 doctors, 257 pharmacists, 77 others, 12 acupuncturists, 10 nurses, and 11 dentists) and evaluated the test quality. The performance of all examinees was 67.7 ± 16.9 points (mean score ± standard deviation). Among the doctors, the mean score of Kampo medicine specialists (83.8 ± 8.7 points) was significantly higher than that of non-specialists (65.3 ± 16.3 points) (p<0.0001). The performance of doctors who prescribed 20 or more Kampo medicines (78.4 ± 11.5 points) was significantly higher than that of other doctors (p<0.0001). Among the 25 questions, the difficulty levels of 13, 8, and 4 were easy, moderate, and hard (correct answer rates: 70% or more, 40-70%, and less than 40%), respectively. The ability of 13 questions (52%) to distinguish between good and poor performers was extremely high (discrimination index of 0.5 or higher). Collectively, these results supported the good performance of our test, suggesting that it is a highly practical learning achievement evaluation system that could utilize information and communication technology and is expected to be used in future lifelong learning in the field of Kampo medicine.