TOKYO, October 18, 2024 – (JCN Newswire) – Fujitsu and Teikyo University’s Okinaga Research Institute announced that starting today they will launch a large-scale joint research project to develop a user experience (UX) platform. This platform will help improve health awareness and literacy in healthcare by increasing patients’ understanding of their internal states through the use of digital technologies such as extended reality (XR) and spatial computing (1).

In this research project, Fujitsu and the Okinaga Research Institute will use XR and spatial computing to recreate a patient’s internal anatomy in a virtual space, increasing their understanding of the locations where health problems can arise. The two parties will explore how this visualization can promote health awareness, behavior change and improved patient outcomes. The technology will be used in interviews with patients who have been advised to improve their lifestyle based on the results of a health check. In addition, the two parties will also create an AI avatar for healthcare assistants with generative AI technology to monitor patients and explore its effect on improving patients’ healthcare literacy.

Background

In recent years, lifestyle-related diseases have increased among both the elderly and the young. Preventing serious diseases through lifestyle improvements is expected to reduce the national health care burden, improve enterprise labor productivity, and improve individual quality of life. The Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare therefore requires health insurers to devise and implement data care plans. From this, effective improvements are promoted through the plan-do-check-act (PDCA) cycle. In this cycle, data from the results of health checks kept by health insurers and bills for medical treatments are used to analyze the relationship between the data obtained from the medical examination and diseases to improve the patient’s lifestyle.

Improving lifestyles requires not only the support of healthcare providers, but also a fundamental change in individual mindsets.

In October 2022, Fujitsu and the Okinaga Research Institute began research to close the communication gap between doctors and patients by using XR, spatial computing and generative AI in informed consent. This research led to the development of virtual internal body models, generated from patients’ biological data and technology, for an AI avatar for medical assistants. This research forms the basis of this latest project.

Roles of both parties:

1. Fujitsu

– Conducting design research (2) with related parties and experts to identify barriers to people’s awareness of real lifestyle improvement
– Creating UX/UI scenarios that allow people to autonomously improve their lifestyle
– Providing development support for an initial prototype, proposing improvements and conducting a demonstration test with the prototype

2. Okinaga Research Institute:

– Providing medical expertise
– Sharing visualization expertise in the field of medicine
– Developing a first prototype that uses organ data

Future plans

Based on the results of this joint research project, Fujitsu and Teikyo University will contribute to improving people’s well-being and solving social problems related to health by preventing lifestyle-related diseases through the social implementation of health guidance using digital technology.

(1) Spatial Computing: A technology that seamlessly integrates physical and digital spaces, allowing people to interactively manage information within that space.
(2) Design research: Research with the aim of designing products and services from the user’s perspective. This research collects and organizes various information to identify potential customer needs and discover new problems and value.

About Fujitsu

Fujitsu’s goal is to make the world more sustainable by building trust in society through innovation. As the digital transformation partner of choice for customers in more than 100 countries, our 124,000 employees are working to solve some of the biggest challenges facing humanity. Our range of services and solutions is based on five key technologies: computing, networking, AI, data and security and converging technologies, which we bring together to achieve sustainability transformation. Fujitsu Limited (TSE:6702) reported consolidated revenues of 3.7 trillion yen (US$26 billion) for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2024 and remains the largest digital services company in Japan by market share. More information: www.fujitsu.com.

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Teikyo University
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