OBJECTIVES Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) of Japan announced the rule about electronic preservation of a medical record in 1999. Then, introduction of Electric Medical Record (EMR) into a hospital was started. Government set a target of diffusion rate of EMR to 60% in 2006, but the result was only 20-30%. It has been believed that EMR system improved efficacy of the hospital. But a pure hospital management/financial meaning of EMR is still not clear. It is said that the total costs for maintaining EMR are 2-5% of medical revenue and they are continuously needed. In Japan, in order to increase the efficiency of a clinical trial/research, government is planning to set up one big virtual hospital using EMR and IT technology. In this study, we analyze the change in financial condition and the price of EMR system. METHODS From the hospital website and financial statement, we checked when and whether EMR was introduced. Then we analyzed the change in financial condition of the hospital that introduced EMR with the hospital that did not introduce EMR using the financial statements of 143 hospitals in National Hospital Organization (NHO). The information of the EMR price was obtained from the government website. RESULTS In 2011, there were 44 hospitals that had introduced EMR. Comparing the financial condition between the hospital with EMR and the hospital without EMR, there was 1% or more of difference in medical revenue. The average price of EMR for 1 year per 1 bed was US$328.8. CONCLUSIONS The result demonstrated that the price of all EMR system did not improve hospital finance and efficiency. Because of the high cost EMR system, making one big virtual hospital using IT technology is still difficult. Therefore, we need more cost effective and easy EMR system.