Ⅰ. Current Situation

Japan is ahead of the world in facing an aging society with fewer children, and the elderly population currently comprising 20%, is anticipated to exceed one third of the total population in 2050, the arrival of a super-aged society. This means an excessive overdependence and burden on the younger generation in the near future, in terms of both work force and economic force. In order to get a fundamental and sustainable solution, it is necessary to construct a future-oriented medical system that enables the healthy longevity of the elderly, and its commercialization in a globally cost competitive way. Problems to be overcome include mismatch of medical needs and scientific and technological seeds, regulatory obstacles toward approval, high developmental risk of new medical devices and pharmaceuticals, low national consciousness about active maintenance and improvement of one’s own health, insufficient technological development to create global standard or to attain high efficiency.

In order to tackle such problems, we need to make the most of the innovative scientific and technological seeds, human and material resources (facility, clinical data, clinical samples, medical staff, etc.) of the hospital located in the same venue, risk reduction measures including the utilization of the Investment Business Funds, and broad global network that the University of Tokyo possesses, and construct an Open Innovation Platform for industry-academia collaboration that connects all the stakeholders including industry, academia and hospital in an unprecedented framework with a high degree of freedom, and achieve innovation based on science and technology.

In an industry-academia collaboration starting from basic research at the university to market deployment, there are Valleys of Death when establishing a platform technology out of the fruit of basic research, and when making a prototype using the platform technology. These first and second Valleys of Death have been conquered with experience from traditional industry-academia collaborations. However, in order to achieve innovation, a "third Valley of Death" between commercialization and market creation/development has to be overcome. This means that issues including lack of collaboration between clinicians and regulatory agencies, large risk for market development, and underdevelopment of the scientific technology platform to support the entire Healthy Long Life Loop, have to be addressed.

Ⅱ. Social Impact

Molting from a "Challenge-ridden Country" to a "Leading Country" with an aging society with fewer children

To sustain an aging society with fewer children, with an elderly population of more than 40 million expected for over 40 years, it is important to create a new industry that contributes to the formation of a platform for the realization of healthy long life for the elderly. Our nation anticipates an increase in social security service costs including medical and nursing care due to an aging society with fewer children. By the creation, however, of products that contribute to a healthy long life and a new industry that materializes our concept of "From hospitalization to outpatient care, From outpatient care to home care, Being healthy at home, " we can expect a decrease in social security cost and investment by the elderly for their own healthy and pleasant life. A big impact can be expected from the creation of a path of innovation to the "self-managing healthy society", encouraging personal and economic independence of the elderly, changing from "dependence to the younger generation to coexistence with the younger generation."

There is great impact in the fact that cost reduction and social satisfaction can be achieved at the same time, by the materialization of the concept of "From hospitalization to outpatient care, From outpatient care to home care, Being healthy at home", through the development of key technology and social implementation, and the creation of a new industry that contributes to the healthy long life from expert knowledge in medical care. Other measures are taken, such as collaborating from the start of the research and development with companies aiming at establishing a health and medical business from a new point of view, such as the distribution industry, implementing the fruit of the work done at the COI in the society, catching societal needs in advance and feeding them back to the research and development. These efforts will lead to the creation of a new industry, and the path from the elderly "dependent on the younger generation" to "co-existing and co-thriving with the younger generation."

Such an attempt of world-leading development in the aging society with fewer children of Japan, where abundant scientific and technology seeds exist, could result in catching the future global demand ahead of time and creating a new market. It is right now that Japan has the chance to develop the health and medical business into a major industry. It is an especially good opportunity to gain advantage over other countries in the global competition for medical devices (especially treatment device) and pharmaceuticals markets, which Japan has been in adverse balance of trade. In this way, evolution from a country with an "aging society with fewer children" to a country with "advanced solution for an aging society with fewer children" can be achieved.

Realization of a society where individuals pursue a healthy long life

Although aging is advancing in our country, comparison of the normal walking speed of an elderly in the years 1992 and 2000, has shown that both men and women have become "younger" by 11 years. Health, aging and disorders are continuous states experienced by an individual, closely linked to the individual’s life, therefore it is not impossible to keep a healthy state in an elderly person for a long time by changing the environment. The innovation in our proposal is to materialize a society where the elderly can keep a high quality life, by using high level medical technology and engineering and molecular technology to maintain and improve health, and at the same time, create products and services that support health by merging the high engineering, nanotechnology, molecular technology, energy technology, IT technology with medical technology and knowledge, and balancing the social economics. Through these products and services, health improvement as well as early diagnosis and early treatment of lifestyle related diseases and chronic diseases are achieved, leading to the realization of health and longevity by the individual’s own initiative, and a society where the elderly does not over-depend on social welfare.

Leverage medical knowledge and technology for healthy long life and aim at the creation of a new industry in the health and medical field

In order to pursue a healthy long life, it is necessary to apply medical-grade technology and knowledge to health issues. Industry-academia collaboration is an effective solution, among the medical industry (with strong technology and detailed medical knowledge ranging from medical engineering, biocompatible materials, pharmaceuticals, and diagnostic agents), medical and nursing service companies, and companies having a strong R&D potential and service business to enable a comfortable lifestyle. It is also effective for the creation of a new industry, to construct, under careful guidance by the university, an environment where venture start-ups and small and medium-sized companies can also access medical technology, knowledge and clinical data, to promote business advancements into areas that were difficult to get in, such as personal medicine and preventive care. Social implementation is accelerated by conducting industry-academia collaboration and open innovation in an effective way.

We will make a breakthrough by multidisciplinary academia-academia and academia-industry collaboration, merging the discipline of engineering including image processing, robotics and simulation, nanotechnology, molecular technology, energy, information engineering, with the disciplines of medicine and pharmaceutical sciences. We will develop technology and materials that integrate health and medical service and social economics, develop high-efficiency production technology, construct and normalize the health-medical information system, downsize devices, and develop a common platform for core technology and information. We will also collaborate with the hospital to enable clinical feedback and clinical evidence from an early stage of development, to drastically reduce development cost and time. By collaborating with the distribution and healthcare industries, which are indispensable in the implementation of the outcome of the COI to the social infrastructure as applications to improve health, increase in the probability of social implementation and speed-up of implementation can be expected.

The university labs, the hospital and the group of companies shall collaborate by leveraging their complementary strengths "Under One Roof" to carry out the aforementioned. This joint initiative is expected to lead to accelerated research, optimized total productization process, accelerated social implementation, and creation of a new industry in the field of health and medical care.
By getting Ph.D. students, industry researchers and engineers involved in the COI, we can conduct practical training of human resources to lead innovation with long term experience in interdisciplinary activity, and tackle an issue that the university is not good at: starting a business.

Ⅲ. The final "application" that the COI aims at and its socioeconomic impact

All-Japan Standardization of Health and Medical ICT

Leveraging of existing personal data accumulated in the electronic chart of the University of Tokyo Hospital resulting from medical care based on cutting-edge disease science, clinical treatment information such as medication, and daily-life information, as well as construction of a new database of the genome and biomarkers for cancer, dementia, lifestyle-related diseases, chronic renal failure, immunological disease, and orphan diseases such as ALS, are conducted in this group. A health and medical data platform is constructed by evaluating the new database against cutting-edge disease science and integrating it with the electronic chart (personal information, clinical treatment information, life information, etc.). Construction of a national scale health and medical database is aimed at, by collaborating with other COI sites. In the future, image data obtained through the development of ubiquitous diagnostic/therapeutic systems will be integrated, enabling a Power of Body Map in which scaling of biological information, from body to organ, tissue, cell and molecule is possible.
With the realization of a national scale health and medical database, a person will be able to accumulate one’s own health and medical log, changing from birth to infant, youth going through development, maturation period, and old age. The health and medical log can not only be utilized for one’s personal healthy long life, but also leveraged as an asset to realize a healthy long life society at low cost, by passing it on to the next generation and continuing the accumulation of data. The health and medical log will be utilized in various industries including sports, food, apparel, recreation, corporate health management, insurance and nursing care, and be the platform to create inexpensive and high quality services.

Development of Ubiquitous Diagnostic/Therapeutic Systems

Integrated therapeutic devices combining medical device with pharmaceuticals, ubiquitous diagnostic/therapeutic systems integrated with information processing capabilities, biomaterial with exponential improvement in performance by combination with pharmaceuticals and cells, will be developed in this group, as well as technology to take ultralow volume sample from the human body, and precision measuring technology to detect abnormalities in biomolecules and cells.
Such small device that enables commonplace diagnosis and treatment "anytime, anywhere", can be mounted on a motor vehicle and applied to the sophistication of emergency medical service and home medical care in remote areas. It may be applicable to the dissemination business of low cost medical service in developing countries, where medical service and infrastructure are not fully established. Business connecting medical services and watch-over nursing care can also be expected.

Innovation in prophylaxis and ME-BYO (pre-symptomatic state)

In order to achieve the goal of staying "Healthy at Home," it is important to create a system that enables measurement and testing of health status at home, to conduct self-managed prophylaxis and maintain a ME-BYO (pre-symptomatic state). Also important is for each individual to consider health maintenance as a serious personal matter "JIBUNGOTO." This is Health Service Innovation, the challenge that should be addressed by all the COI sites. Within the context of collaboration among the COI sites, we will enable blood sampling at home by use of microfluidic technology, establish a self-measurement and testing system based on high sensitivity detection of biomarkers for prophylaxis and ME-BYO (pre-symptomatic state), develop a device that accurately predicts various diseases by verbal analysis of pathophysiology, and link them with the fruits of other COI sites. Such innovation in measurement and testing systems is not enough to make JIBUNGOTO (to make one consider health maintenance as a serious personal matter) possible. It is necessary at the same time, to draw up a health guidance manual based on scientific evidence and utilize it to invoke enlightenment in each person, to improve health literacy. As for health guidance, we will introduce whole genomic analysis technology to train and deploy to the society a large number of unprecedented "health concierge," to establish "JIBUNGOTO" throughout the entire population.

A Self-Managing Healthy Society connected by Health and Medical ICT