July.13.2024 KIP Forum "Emergency medical care in real and how the remote medicine should be "

Mr. Toshio Chiba, The medical doctor, specially-appointed professor at Juntendo University, the Board chairman at Medical Innovation Consortium

【Speech and Q&A】

The speaker spoke about the difficulties in medical care and the technology development to solve them. The existing medical care is being developed, but many troubles still exist. One of the ways to solve them is the technology development. For example, 8K endoscopes are solving some of the difficulties. When doctors examine patients online, they have trouble with technology and communication. I learned that these troubles must be solved. During the question-and-answer session, we learned that it is important to show the value of remote medical care by starting it in suitable areas and for doctors, engineers, and businesspeople to cooperate in medical technology development.

【Group and Ground discussion】

The discussion concerned, "How should remote medical care be done to reduce the regional disparities in medical treatment, and how can difficulties in remote medical care be solved?” Participants suggested that remote medical care gives elderly people or those in inconvenient areas easy access to medical care or medical specialists. Therefore, participants proposed a system connecting patients with doctors and online daycare for the elderly to reduce the medical regional disparity. However, doctors need to share patients’ medical histories because patients will have easy access to different doctors. To solve this problem, some participants suggested the link of the drug history handbooks to My Number accounts, but some participants wondered whether it is good for the government to manage medical information. We actively discussed the use of remote medical care and considered concrete ideas about it. It was a good discussion giving us a new perspective about the future of medical care.

【Personal Opinion】

Through this forum, I learned about medical technology and medical regional disparity. I started to live in an urban area and forget the regional disparity, but it exists. This forum was a good opportunity to reconsider the medical-regional disparity from a new perspective. In the discussion, I focused on technological difficulties, so it was interesting for other participants to suggest the need to share medical information or the online communicational barrier. Mr. Chiba told us that it is indispensable for engineers, doctors, and businesspeople to cooperate to develop efficient technology. The communicational trouble is one of the troubles which is difficult to solve without doctors. These days, many technologies are being developed. Many patients are saved thanks to them. However, Mr. Chiba said that communication between doctors and patients is getting more and more important because it is becoming common to use computers in medical care. In this discussion, the system to connect doctors and patients is focused on, but I found that it is important for doctors and patients to change their attitude in medical care. I consider this is a common difficulty in this society.

Naoya Arata, The University of Tokyo, Faculty of Liberal Arts, 2nd year

Back