Startup Ecosystem Tokyo Consortium held the Bio Wellness Working Group on Wednesday, March 2023, 3 at the Nihonbashi Life Science Building. In the first half of the day, the secretariat introduced trends in the medical industry and the latest examples of initiatives, and based on that content, participants held a discussion aimed at creating new business in the second half.
First, the secretariat explained the appearance of the healthcare business.
In Japan, the elderly population is increasing and social security costs are increasing year by year, so efforts to address social security issues are being promoted through public-private partnerships. Lifestyle-related diseases account for more than one-third of the total medical expenses, and it is important to put particular emphasis on prevention as a countermeasure.
When considering the healthcare business, he focused on solutions and explained how to divide it into phases such as prevention, hospital, and prognosis. In every phase, there is a growing movement to introduce digital into traditional services.
Innovations related to internal hospital operations have received particular attention during the coronavirus pandemic. Amidst a shortage of medical personnel due to the prolonged coronavirus pandemic, many medical workers are leaving hospitals, and the challenge is how to support hospital operations with a small number of people.
Furthermore, seamlessly connecting everything from prevention to prognosis digitally is highly relevant to smart cities, and is attracting attention from local governments and developers. As for solutions related to health and prevention, specific examples include cases in which local governments collaborate with companies that provide services related to health and prevention in order to reduce local medical costs, and cases in which companies collaborate with retailers. A case in which a nutrition management service is provided to local residents has been highlighted as a notable example. Furthermore, in terms of solutions related to prognosis and nursing care, in addition to the issues of nursing care itself, the issue is effective support backed by data. As a specific example, various services that utilize AI are being developed.
Regenerative medicine has also become one of the technologies that has attracted attention in recent years. As the market continues to grow, there is growing interest in collaboration between regenerative medicine and local healthcare services as an area that will attract attention in the future.
Based on the explanation from the secretariat, participants were divided into groups and had discussions aimed at business collaboration in the bio-wellness field.
In the health prevention part, we discussed what kind of companies and organizations we need to collaborate with in order to grow and develop our business.As a result, we decided that there is a need for collaboration with local governments that can cooperate with demonstration experiments, etc. We received opinions on the necessity of matching with large companies and the possibility of collaboration between startup companies with highly compatible domains. In addition, we received many enthusiastic comments that, through the activities of the Tokyo Consortium, we would like to engage in ongoing conversations with companies and organizations, create matching opportunities, and formulate projects that address social and regional issues.
In addition, we received the opinion that it is necessary to create a place where four parties - universities, large companies, startups, and local governments - can meet regularly to strengthen industry-academia collaboration.
The secretariat will continue to support the matching with various stakeholders that was discussed in the working session, and we discussed that we will consider activities from next year onwards.
