Japan Health & Medical Data Search

Search across Japan's most authoritative health and medical data sources in one unified Apify Actor. This tool queries the e-Gov Health & Medical Open Data Catalog and the MHLW (Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare) Portal Navigation Links to deliver structured, up-to-date results from Japanese government health databases.

Why Japan Health Data Matters

Japan maintains some of the most comprehensive public health datasets in the world. The Japanese government publishes health statistics, medical facility registries, pharmaceutical databases, disease surveillance reports, and welfare program data through multiple official portals. Accessing this Japan health data programmatically has traditionally required navigating fragmented Japanese-language portals, understanding different API conventions, and handling inconsistent data formats.

This Actor solves that problem by providing a single search interface across two key Japanese medical database sources, returning normalized results ready for analysis, research, or integration into your data pipelines.

Data Sources

e-Gov Health & Medical Open Data Catalog (egov_health)

The e-Gov open data platform is Japan's central government data portal. The health and medical subset includes datasets published by national ministries and agencies covering:

• Public health surveillance and epidemiological data
• Hospital and clinic registries across all Japanese prefectures
• Pharmaceutical approval and drug safety databases
• Health insurance and national medical expenditure statistics
• Cancer registry data and screening program results
• Maternal and child health records
• Infectious disease monitoring reports including COVID-19, influenza, and tuberculosis
• Mental health service utilization statistics
• Nutrition surveys and dietary reference intakes for the Japanese population

This source is ideal for researchers, policy analysts, and healthcare organizations seeking official Japanese government health datasets. The catalog is continuously updated as ministries publish new open data releases.

MHLW Portal Navigation Links (mhlw)

The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) is Japan's primary government body responsible for healthcare policy, medical regulation, social welfare, and labor standards. The MHLW portal navigation links dataset provides structured access to:

• Policy documents and white papers on Japanese healthcare reform
• Statistical reports on Japan's aging population and long-term care
• Medical practitioner licensing and workforce data
• Welfare program guidelines and social assistance frameworks
• Food safety and pharmaceutical regulation notices
• Occupational health and workplace safety standards
• Links to regional health bureau resources across Japan

This source is particularly valuable for navigating the extensive MHLW web presence, which contains thousands of pages of health policy documentation, statistical tables, and regulatory guidance that are otherwise difficult to discover through manual browsing.

How It Works

The Actor connects to the SIP API, which aggregates and indexes Japanese government data sources. When you provide a search keyword, the Actor queries each selected source in parallel using async HTTP requests, collects the results, and pushes them to the Apify dataset for easy export and integration.

Each result record includes the original data fields from the source along with a source field indicating which database it came from (egov_health or mhlw), making it straightforward to filter and process results downstream.

Input Configuration

Parameter	Type	Required	Default	Description
keyword	string	Yes	cancer	The search term to query across selected Japanese health data sources. Supports both English and Japanese keywords.
sources	array	No	All sources	Which data sources to search. Options: egov_health (e-Gov Health Open Data), mhlw (MHLW Portal Links).
maxResults	integer	No	50	Maximum number of results per source. Maximum allowed value is 200.

Example Input

{
  "keyword": "diabetes",
  "sources": ["egov_health", "mhlw"],
  "maxResults": 100
}

To search only the MHLW portal for mental health resources:

{
  "keyword": "精神保健",
  "sources": ["mhlw"],
  "maxResults": 50
}

Output Format

Results are stored in the default Apify dataset. Each record contains fields returned by the source API along with a source identifier. You can access results via the Apify API, download as JSON/CSV/Excel, or connect them directly to your workflows using Apify integrations.

Example Output Record

{
  "source": "egov_health",
  "title": "Cancer Registry Data 2022",
  "url": "https://example.go.jp/dataset/cancer-2022",
  "description": "National cancer registry statistics for fiscal year 2022."
}

Use Cases

• Medical research: Search for specific disease data, clinical trial registries, or epidemiological datasets from official Japanese government sources to support academic research on Japan health data.
• Healthcare market analysis: Find MHLW data on medical facility counts, healthcare spending trends, pharmaceutical approvals, and workforce statistics relevant to the Japanese medical database landscape.
• Policy monitoring: Track new publications and dataset releases from Japan's health ministries to stay current on regulatory changes and public health initiatives.
• Data journalism: Access primary source data from Japanese government health portals for investigative reporting on healthcare outcomes, spending, and policy effectiveness.
• Public health surveillance: Query infectious disease reports, vaccination coverage data, and health screening results from Japan's comprehensive public health monitoring systems.
• Cross-border health comparisons: Retrieve standardized Japanese health statistics for international comparative studies and global health research projects.

Environment Variables

Variable	Description
SIP_API_KEY	Your SIP API key for authenticating requests to the data source API. Configure this in your Apify Actor environment settings.

Technical Details

• Built with Python 3.13 and async HTTP via httpx for fast parallel queries
• Uses the Apify SDK v2 for seamless integration with the Apify platform
• All source queries execute concurrently to minimize total run time
• Graceful error handling per source — a failure in one source does not block results from others
• Supports both English and Japanese search keywords for maximum flexibility when querying Japanese medical database content

Keywords

Japan health data, Japanese medical database, MHLW data, e-Gov open data, Japan healthcare API, Japanese government health statistics, Japan public health data, medical data Japan, Japan health search, MHLW portal, Japan disease data, Japanese health datasets, Japan medical research data, healthcare data scraper Japan

Use as MCP Tool (AI Agent Integration)

This Actor works as an MCP tool — AI agents (Claude, GPT, Cursor) can discover and run it automatically.

Quick setup (Claude Desktop / Cursor / VS Code)

Add to your MCP config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apify": {
      "url": "https://mcp.apify.com",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN"
      }
    }
  }
}

Then ask your AI: "Search for pharmaceutical in Japanese health databases"

Direct API call

from apify_client import ApifyClient
client = ApifyClient("YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("lentic_clockss/japan-health-data-search").call(
    run_input={"searchTerms": ["pharmaceutical"], "maxResultsPerSource": 50}
)
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item)

Other Data API Actors

• US Healthcare Provider Data API
• EU Health & Compliance Data API
• Taiwan Government Data API