Annika Österdahl is a freelance consultant in life science with focus on the digital health market. She is also engaged in entrepreneurship education at Karolinska Institutet and has previous experience from working with health tech startups. Annika is a Clinical Innovation Fellow and holds a MSc in Biomedicine and a MSc in Economics from Karolinska Institutet and the University of Gothenburg.
How come you decided to join the Health 2.0 Japan conference?
- I have attended the Health 2.0 conferences in Europe and California the last two years, and Japan was just to interesting not to go for! I think it is a great opportunity for networking and to see new trends and products within digital health globally.
What kind of conference is this?
- The conference gathered entrepreneurs, healthcare professionals, investors, large corporations and governmental leaders for two days of live demos, keynotes, panel discussions and exhibitions. The main topic was how to use health technology to tackle key issues facing the healthcare industry and how to redesigning the healthcare landscape in Japan. I was one of few non-Japanese speaking participants. Luckily, they had a simultaneous interpretation service that I discovered after the first keynote held in Japanese.
What are the challenges within healthcare and health in Japan and do they differ compared to EU/US?
- The challenges are similar to those we face in EU and US, but with a few interesting twists.
One of the largest upcoming challenges for the Japanese healthcare system is the aging population. In Japan, being called a “super-aging society”, around a quarter of the population is older than 65 (roughly 30 million people) compared to Sweden where around one in five is older than 65. And the numbers are as we know expected to increase.
Another driver as I see it, which was maybe extra strong in Japan, is the expectations from the public and the healthcare professionals on the digitalization of healthcare. From a patient-perspective, already today, many expects it to be possible to communicate with our doctor on smartphones, read our lab results on Tuesday evenings if we want to and have full access to our own health data. For the near in time future, I believe that many will have the same expectations for at least partly remote diagnosis and treatment, e.g. through blended psychological treatment for depression and stress-related diseases which several scientific studies have addressed recently. This of course brings about other challenges for the digital health community, such as how to make sure the products developed are thoroughly validated, secure to use and meet the regulatory standards.
Lifestyle-related diseases such as diabetes and obesity have also increased strongly in Japan. As in many other countries, these are the main drivers pushing for new products and services in digital health. In short, we need to do more with less, and when new technology and healthcare meets and we create well-designed products this can be achieved.
From a business perspective, the challenge for startups also discussed at the conference is still mainly how to create sustainable and profitable business models.
What are the current trends in Digital Health/Health Technology in Japan? Is there a strong start-up scene in the field?
- The conference addressed areas that are often addressed at these kinds of meetings, such as patient engagement, predictive analytics, open data, digital communication tools, wearables and need driven innovation. And, as always, how to get more well-functioning electronic health records. In Japan, compared to other countries, I saw a larger amount of innovation relating to robotics, the use of AI-based technology and big data.
The live demos of early stage startups included products for how to find and rate medical doctors, novel toilet sensors, prosthetic hands, specifically created nutritional drinks based on point-of-care health analysis and stress measurement devices.
Personally, I especially like the Health 2.0 live demos of products from early phase startups. The winner at this conference, the prize including a trip to pitch in Silicon Valley, was a smart toilet with sensors for diagnostics. I don’t think I would have expected to see that even as a participating demo session at a similar event in Sweden. But in Japan, it felt natural in some way given their high tech bathrooms, and well executed it isn’t a bad idea when you think about it.
From my own experience, after spending two weeks after the conference looking for nomad workplaces in and around Tokyo, the culture of co-working spaces and startups communities in general haven’t come as far as in say Sweden. However, as for Swedes, it’s not unusual for young Japanese entrepreneurs to go to California for some time to learn and embrace the culture. So I guess it is just a matter of time before we see more vivid startup scene for digital health in Japan. In a VC panel discussion, it was stressed that the digital health market in Japan might still be rather immature, but that on the other hand it is hard to find a market for digital health anywhere in the word that can be said to have a mature digital health market.
Do you think Japan could be a good market for Swedish companies within Digital Health?
- Yes! I believe that Japan, still having the third-largest economy in the world, should be a market to be investigated further by Swedish companies wanting to expand outside Europe. Especially if you are interested in robotics of different kinds (try google for Honda Walking Assist, Aiko Chihira – the humanoid communication android using sign-languages and last but not least, PARO the robotic seal)
For an early phase startup, it could also be an interesting country to look for collaborations to learn from each other. If so, to start with learning at least a few phrases in Japanese would probably help.
