Professor Taku Iwami of Kyoto University's Health, Safety, and Environment Organization is launching a business-academia collaborative research partnership together with OMRON Corporation, Dai-ichi Life Insurance Co Ltd, MedPeer Inc, and Recruit Holdings Co Ltd, aimed at improving the quality of data-based health management. Starting with the health management of university students, the project will standardize personal health records (PHRs) and promote their wider utilization.
While until now medical exams and the measuring of vital signs, such as blood pressure and physical activity, have been carefully recorded, acquired data has not been fully utilized to promote health. However, recently, rapid development and dissemination of information and communication technologies, such as cloud computing and smartphones, is expected to enable full utilization of big data, bringing about great innovation in healthcare.
Professor Iwami's research group will explore PHR-based business opportunities seeking to improve health, such as:
- Developing a business model around standardized PHRs, including identifying problems in promoting health and improving the quality of medical care based on PHR data
- Standardizing information collected from health checkups at national universities, emergencies or disasters, and primary care, in a manner where validity is assessable
- Conducting epidemiological research on the relationship between people's lifestyle, such as how they eat, exercise, and sleep, and their health conditions and occurrences of illness
- Proposing a model of improving health based on experiment results from Kyoto University, along with data obtained from the Conference of the Citizens of Kyoto City Health and Longevity Project
- Concentrating the efforts of Kyoto University and collaborating firms engaged in the health and information sectors, by finding ways to promote PHR-based health services, identifying and solving problems in improving the quality of medical care, and exploring actual business models
- Utilizing the knowledge and networks of stakeholders to establish and commercialize structures through which people can use their own standardized health records safely through the course of their lives
Anticipated achievements of this research project include: sharing standardized PHRs among university healthcare personnel nationwide; storing health records safely using standardized PHRs; advising those who provide their personal records; and establishing a business model where healthier living can be incentivized, such as through a system of loyalty points.
