Healthcare Innovation Course｜KOCHI MEDICAL SCHOOL

Objective

It is expected that Japan will face social issues in terms of aging community coexisting with unexpected disasters, as outbreak of COVID-19, as well as aging society, lack of provision of medical services and natural disaster such as great earthquake, has become new threat to the society. It will be required to society (1) to maintain sound environment in peacetime as much as possible and (2) to create new techniques and technologies tackling against disasters occurring and changing shapes one after another. Healthcare Innovation Course aims to train those capable of generating healthcare-related-innovation in a perspective of medical engineering on the basis of “connection of people”. Whereas university hospital takes responsibility of above training and provides advanced medical care to community as the core, it seems the hospital has not functioned sufficiently due to its vertical subdivided structure. In order to solve this issue, the course has an objective of developing “Innovative Resource Manager (IRM)” who plays role in finding and utilizing talent hidden by barriers in a complex of various different departments with cross-disciplinary view. IRM contributes to solve issues in medical safety management such as medical incidents, to bring positive effects on hospital management by saving time and effort of subdivision, and to find new value on hidden talent.

This Course is for junior medical staff members and engineers who are enthusiastic in actively contributing to the above things or utilizing own ability for healthcare-related-companies or venture business. The students firstly acquire fundamental knowledge about medicine and engineering and learn systematic design engineering, AI and know-how of innovation and starting-up of a company. Then, they will widen their scope of thinking by lectures about organizational behavior management, risk and crisis management, issues related community medicine and hospital management. Those who has started own company as global company and venture business are included in lecturers in this course. Given the features, the course can expert crucial influence to students’ view and way of thinking, and be greatly positive effects on planning career after completing the course. The course will be completed by finishing research and development in relation to the subject students choose, and then it is expected that those who complete the course will play important role in variety of fields including medical institutes, government agencies or start-up companies.

Admission Policy

Those who are eager to develop knowledge and skills about medicine and engineering, and to contribute to generate new knowledge and innovative technology and to develop human resources which can solve social issues of healthcare surrounding local cities
Those who are eager to contribute to improve hospital function, make management strategy and develop medical safety by digital transformation on the basis of knowledge of IT, AI, system-design engineering and risk management
Those who are eager to make great contribution as key person creating collaborative environment over different specialties and organizations with vertical subdivided structure among medical institutes or industry-academia-government sectors
Those who are eager to learn and acquire professional knowledge about intellectual property, business management, law and regulation planning to make great contribution in healthcare-related-innovation, starting-up of ventures and company

Supervisors for Research and Main Theme of Research

Supervisors for Research	Department	Main Theme of Research	Humanities	Sciences
SATO Takayuki	Physiology	Development of medical instrument and assistance for forming business	−	○
SUGANUMA Narufumi	Human Health and Medical Sciences, Preventive and Community Medicine Section	Occupational respiratory disease, occupational health, environmental medicine, international health	○	○
Undecided	Human Health and Medical Sciences, Liaison Healthcare Engineering Section	Undecided	−	○
YAMAGAMI Takuji	Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology	Research on morphological image and function metabolism image Research related to interventional radiology Fundamental and clinical research on radiotherapy against cancer	−	○
KAWANO Takashi	Anesthesiology　and Intensive Care Medicine	Explication of pathological mechanism of Chronic pain and development of new method of treatment Explication of pathological mechanism of postoperative cognitive dysfunction and “septic encephalopathy” and development of new method of treatment Interaction of anesthesia and ion channels	−	○
KITAOKA Hiroaki	Cardiology and Geriatrics	Research on cause and pathology of cardiomyopathy, arteriosclerosis and organ damage Research on explication of pathology of heart failure and policy of prognosis improvement	−	○
KAZUI Hiroaki	Neuropsychiatry	Explication of discovering mechanism of mental illness symptoms and development of treatment, research on diagnostic image in neurology, research on community psychiatric medicine	○	○
IKEUCHI Masahiko	Orthopaedic Surgery	Fundamental and clinical research on locomotor pain Development of new treatments for spinal and joint diseases Development of rehabilitation welfare equipment	−	○
INOUE Keiji	Urology	Pathological and functional explication by genetic analysis of urological tumor Development of new method of diagnosis and treatment based on photodynamic technology	○	○
HYODO Masamitsu	Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery	Development of new treatment for dysphagia, pathological evaluation and treatment of voice impairment and microbiological approach to cause of head and neck cancer	○	○
UEBA Tetsuya	Neurosurgery	Genetic analysis of brain tumor and development of treatment of brain tumor stem cells Management of risks and development of treatment against cerebral haemorrhage and cerebral circulation metabolism for the purpose of pathological explication	○	○