See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based MedPeer, the Japanese company behind an online community for medics under the same name, held the Health 2.0 Asia – Japan conference back in December. A pitch competition took place during the conference and six Japanese teams participated in it. The judges for the pitch competition were as follows:

• Akihisa Harada (CEO, Pfizer Japan / M.D.)
• Yoshimasa Kato (General Manager of Tokyu Acceleration program, Tokyu)
• Kenji Kobayashi (Copartner, Signifiant)
• Georgia Mitsi (Senior Director, Head of Digital Health Care Initiatives, Sunovion Pharmaceuticals)
• Takuya Miyata (Founder, General Partner, Scrum Ventures)
• Yasuko Terao (Head of Development Planning Department, Clinical Science Management, R&D Department, Janssen Pharmaceutical / Phar.D.)
• Tatsuo Tsutsumi (General Partner, Gree Ventures)
• Takaaki Umezawa (President, A.T. Kearney Japan)
• Hiroyuki Watanabe (Managing Director, Digital Business Representative, Nikkei)
• Matthew Holt (Co-Chairman, Health 2.0 LLC)
• Yo Iwami (CEO, MedPeer / M.D.)

See also:

• Medical simulator robot Mikoto wins Health 2.0 Asia-Japan 2017 pitch competition
• “Health, Wealth and Fame”… Nevertheless, You Need Health to Begin with!
• Health 2.0 Asia showcases five most prominent healthcare startups from Japan

Top Prize winner: Pocket Therapist by Backtech

Supplemental prizes: 1 million yen (about $9,200) and complimentary inivitation to the 13th Health 2.0 Annual Conference (Silicon Valley, September 2019) for two people

Backtech develops a mobile app for managing back-pain named Pocket Therapist, which suggests optimal exercises or introduces medical facilities according to the user’s back-pain type determined by a proprietary algorithm from Kyoto University.

The app judges users’ current back-pain condition and treatment needs based on their self-assessment and matches them with optimal medical facilities. In addition, it allows them to consult doctors via Skype when needed. The firm has gradually been establishing a B2E (Business-to-enterprise) model through providing two types of services: one is Assessment Plan which supports enterprises to assess the effectiveness of their health promotion measures and the other is Solution Plan which supports productivity improvement through reduction of employees’ back-pain.

Backtech was founded in April of 2016 and then born out of the Kyoto University’s entrepreneur training program Global Technology Entrepreneurship Program. The firm raised an undisclosed amount from Cyberagent Ventures in September 2016 as well as an undisclosed amount from Nippon Venture Capital and JR East Startup in May last year.

AI-powered medical inquiries system for pateints by Ubie

Ubie was founded in May by Yoshinori Abe (medical doctor of the University of Tokyo Hospital) and Kota Kubo (engineer from the medical information service major M3.com). Supervised by medical specialists, the Ubie platform automatically creates a clinical record using the data a patient enters in advance. The firm fundraised around 300 million yen (about $2.8 million) from Kanden Venture Management, the investment arm of Kansai Electric Power in Osaka in its series A round.

Office Natural Frozen Fruits HENOHENO by Day Break

The food-tech firm Day Break focuses on special freezing technologies including quick-freezing and has been providing top-quality frozen fruits under its own brand HENOHENO. With the technology, the HENOHENO fruits are richer in nutrients than raw fruits and are easy to eat due to small ice crystals without damaging scent and taste.

Remote ICU support system T-ICU by T-ICU

T-ICU has developed a 24-hour remote ICU (intensive care unit) system under the same name, which lightens the burden of doctor or nurse in medical sites by giving advices of intensive care from other medical specialists in remote location. With this system, intensive care specialists are able to consider therapeutic strategies by referring clinical records and vital information even in remote location. For medical organizations, it allows them to provide professional supports at much cheaper cost than hiring a new intensive care specialist.

The firm secured funding from Japanese biotech-centric startup accelerator/VC firm Beyond Next Ventures back in June (the amount and the round is not disclosed). This platform was chosen for the Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Accelerator 2018 and won the award for excellence in the program.

Remote monitoring of IBD patients by GCare

GCare focuses on the remote monitoring system for IBD (Inflammatory Bowel Disease) patients. Since the IBD symptom easily changes, it is effective to grasp patients’ state by mobile app and to provide timely treatment. The firm was chosen for Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Accelerator 2018 and is currently developing an mobile app for Ulcerative Colitis patients.

Therapy AI for adult ADHD by HoloAsh

HoloAsh takes on therapeutic solution for ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) patients in ‘motivation interviewing’ or ‘therapeutic communication’ approaches that help ADHD patients to improve their self-esteem through talking with holographic characters. This year, the firm fundraised an undisclosed amount from INDEE Japan, Takeshi Soga (SGcapital), Takashi Shibayama (BLANQ) and Osamu Ogasawara (ABBALab).

See also:

• YC Startup School grad uses holographic AI to evolve developmental disorder therapy

Transkated by Taijiro Takeda

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based MedPeer, the Japanese startup offering collective intelligence service and community site for medical doctors under the same name, held a health tech-focused annual conference called Health 2.0 Asia -Japan earlier this month. During the conference, there was a pitch competition sponsored by Nippon Life Insurance Company, Intage Group and Life Science Innovation Network Japan (LINK-J) with support from Bayer.

Six teams including five Japanese teams and a Danish team gave pitches there. The judges were as follows:

• Eugene Boruknovich (Global Head of Digitlal Health & Innovation, Bayer)
• Genichi Tamatsuka (CEO, Hearts United Group)
• Rubin Farmanfarmaian (Author of ‘The Patient as CEO’)
• Tomoyuki Yuasa (CEO, Revamp)
• Takuya Miyata (Founder / General Partner, Scrum Ventures)
• Shinichiro Hori (CEO, YJ Capital)
• Satoshi Tanaka (Director / Officer, Nippon Life Insurance Company)
• Yuichi Yahagi (CEO, Askrep)
• Yo Iwami (MD, Ph.D / CEO, MedPeer)

See also:

• “Health, Wealth and Fame”… Nevertheless, You Need Health to Begin with!
• Health 2.0 Asia showcases five most prominent healthcare startups from Japan

Top Award / LINK-J Award: Mikoto by Micoto Technology

Supplemental prizes: 1 million yen (about $8,900 ) and 2 participation rights for 12th Health 2.0 Annual Conference (will be held at Silicon Valley in September of 2018)
Supplemental prizes: Use right of share office in Nihonbashi / one-year membership of LINK-J

Tottori-based Micoto Technology, mainly engaged in robot development, develops the simulator robot for medical students named Mikoto, allowing students to simulate nasotracheal intubation process to secure airway for training.

Other than nasotracheal intubation, the firm develops medical simulation robots targeting various parts for treatment, and will continue to make further efforts receiving feedbacks from doctors through partnership with Tottori University Hospital.

Smart Heel by Japan Healthcare

Bad walking posture such as flat walk or bow-legs is one of the risk factors of future physical disability such as knee pain or lower back pain. The total medical expense to treat these patients is estimated to total at 1 trillion yen (about $8.9 billion) annually in Japan. Daichi Okabe, a medical doctor working at the Graduate School of Chiba University, founded Japan Healthcare in June of 2017 and has been developing the walking posture visualization system capable of recording walking posture / rhythm via app and the high heel-shaped IoT (Internet of Things) device Smart Heel, with 3-axis sensors mounted in the heels.

Okabe pointed out the reason why bad walking posture is hard to correct as it is not easy to grasp one’s own walking style. Smart Heel solves this problem by visualizing it. The firm had conducted verification testing on 15 females, and two-thirds of them came to walk with a beautiful posture with Smart Heel. For the remaining
third, improvement of their walking posture can be expected by giving them close feedbacks as well. The firm aims to commence the sale of the product at October of 2018. It will cost about 15,000 yen (about $130) for general users.

Oton Glass by Oton Glass

Oton Glass, as we have repeatedly reported in THE BRIDGE, was initially developed as an glasses-shaped IoT device capable of reading out characters to support people with dyslexia. Currently, it has been developed for various applications such as a translation tool for non-Japanese speakers who are visually impaired or unable to read characters.

The firm had already commenced the order production and has been developing next-generation model capable of linking to internet without requiring external devices. OTON GLASS will create user communities and build the supply chain based on it, aiming to gain insurance approval which allows patients to purchase the OTON GLASS product in 10% copayment under the insurance coverage.

Since it can save user data about what was seen on cloud, the firm also plans to provide new services utilizing the life-log in the future, in consideration of an individual privacy. Expanding its services including Oton Vision (reading-up technology for images), Oton Note (digital note function) or Oton Map (detailed map data), the firm aims to sell 30,000 Oton Glass by 2020.

Base Pasta by Base Food

Base Pasta, developed by Base Food, is a complete nutritious food allowing intake of 31 kinds of nutrients just in a single meal. It targets those who do not know which nutrients to take as the number of people who are increasingly conscious about their health grows. The firm sells BASE PASTA in D2C (direct to consumer) model, and some menus using it have been already served at restaurants.

The firm is going to enter the U.S. market later this year and throughout next year, and expects Amazon or D2C with regular purchase model as its distribution channel as in Japan. Additionally, it has been developing gluten-free products in consideration of the market needs.

See also:

• Japan’s Base Food raises $880K seed funding to sell nutritionally complete pasta in US

Speech training app by Robocure

Robocure develops a speech training app for people with speech impediment such as aphasia. The development has been conducted with support from Prof. Shingo Kuroiwa at Chiba University, as well as Kimitsu Central Hospital for clinical trials and request surveillance for patients. Unlike training with humans, users can train over and over again with the app requiring no care for counterparts. The app can recognize trainee’s speech and identify wrong pronunciation.

A remote management system by speech therapists is currently provided with the app in order to check language information between the app and users, and the firm plans to provide the app for tablet and training support services by qualified person as a set from next spring, targeting 500,000 aphasia patients as well as 2 million potential users in Japan.

The firm will focus on development of additional training function / log analysis and application to preventive care in 2018, and is considering applying insurance coverage or overseas development in 2018.

Gonio VR by Gonio VR

Danish startup Gonio VR provides VR (virtual reality)-based improvement solution for medical therapies. It developed an on-demand medical VR experience and the app was launched on the VR app platform Steam in the first quarter of 2017.

The app has already been implemented in 98 municipalities and more than 100 clinics. In the third quarter of this year, it was implemented to a rehabilitation facility in Denmark for the first time as a VR technology. The app assists optimization of rehabilitation process and labor savings in document creation related to rehabilitation.

Translated by Taijiro Takeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy