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Communication Network Analysis in Maternity Hospital Bulletin Board System

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Abstract

Recent changes in Japanese social environments consequently dropped total fertility rate, and poor interpersonal relationships in local communities have aggravated the environments for childbirth and child-rearing. Under such circumstances, we introduced a bulletin board system (BBS) to an official web-site of a maternity hospital to set up a community for its patients for communication regarding childbirth and the like. Based on the logs from BBS, we graphed types of communication among its users with to describe topologies. Additionally, we calculated degrees of centralization of entire networks and found the hospital role as the administrator becomes smaller as inter-user communication becomes more brisk. The analysis of contents of respective threads also revealed that main topics shifted from gestational matters to postnatal and child-rearing as communication became more brisk, which indicates those postnatal users are also strongly conscious with gestational and progestational contents and contribute to supporting the entire BBS.

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Acknowledgements

We sincerely express our gratitude to Dr. Hitoshi Hiraoka, the director, and Dr. Reiko Takemura, the deputy director, both of Kosaka Womens Hospital, both of whom gave us guidance and advice in carrying out this study, Ms. Katsuko Tadate, the midwife who made great contribution to our analyzing data, and other hospital staff who helped us a lot.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Health Sciences, Osaka University Graduate School of Medicine, 1-7 Yamadaoka, Suita, Osaka, 565-0871, Japan

    Shunji Suto, Terumasa Higashi & Shiro Yorifuji

  2. College of Contemporary Business Administration, Koshien University, 10-1 Momijigaoka, Takarazuka, Hyogo, 665-0006, Japan

    Nobuyuki Ashida

  3. Kosaka Womens Hospital, 3-4-13 Hishiya-nishi, Higashi-Osaka, Osaka, 577-0807, Japan

    Hideo Takemura & Koji Kurimoto

Authors
  1. Shunji Suto
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  2. Nobuyuki Ashida
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  3. Terumasa Higashi
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  4. Hideo Takemura
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  5. Koji Kurimoto
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  6. Shiro Yorifuji
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Correspondence to Shunji Suto.

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Suto, S., Ashida, N., Higashi, T. et al. Communication Network Analysis in Maternity Hospital Bulletin Board System. J Med Syst 31, 141–148 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-006-9049-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-006-9049-5

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