-Social contributions and Patient education than Business-
Written by Suzuki Yoshihiko
雑誌名:医療とコンピュータ vol.11 No.10 2000年10月 3ページから10ページまで
Introduction
I received a request from the editorial department to explain the medical business of Sony Communication Network (So-net). Since I'm a clinician, I never wrote a manuscript about business so I was pretty surprised when I had this offer. So, rather than from the business perspective, I'll explain why I work for So-net, what I'm aiming for, and why it seems to the people around me to be successful as a business.
Until 1996, Sony Co., Ltd. was a low-profile company in the medical industry.
I was invited as a Sony industrial physician more than 10 years ago to fulfill the mission of the founder, Chairman Ibuka. It was a mission that "Sony must be able to contribute to society in the medical field, and I will advise from a doctor's point of view to find it." However, when developing at Sony, it was premised that finding uniqueness that was different from other companies was the highest priority. In other words, it was a condition that only jobs with a frontier spirit were allowed.
However, the medical industry was still a conservative society at that time. It is a company that requires many years of experience in practice and concentrates biological knowledge. Therefore, it was not necessary to incorporate knowledge of new electrical technology and science and engineering, and it was difficult to accept the latest technology and frontier spirit from Sony. As a result, it is no exaggeration to say that Sony was a poorly known company in the Japanese medical industry until 1996.
By embodying ideas, you can do the research you want.
Until 1996, my job was a doctor. I conducted clinical trials, submitted academic papers to overseas magazines, and visited the diabetes outpatient clinic twice a week. However, I continued to have a private idea in research and development. There was little awareness that I had to belong to a university, and I had a strong desire to pay for my own research if possible and to do research freely at that cost. Therefore, I focused on writing a treatise with an idea without spending research funds and applying for a patent from that treatise.Currently, if you enter my name on the JPO homepage, 21 will be accepted. I submitted 21 patents or applications for practical use, but I was thinking about more than 10 times as many ideas.
I was able to gain experience in the field of patient education.
My specialty is diabetes. However, another area of expertise beyond specialty is patient education. What happened was that the diabetic population has grown exponentially over the last decade, several times faster.This has created a situation where millions of diabetics have to be treated by thousands of diabetics. As a result, my area of expertise was diabetic neuropathy, but I had to do another job which was “patient education”.
Patient education is the teaching of patients with useful information for treatment. However, in the case of diabetes, teaching the latest treatments to non-specialists and medical workers, who treat patients is also part of patient education. Therefore, the act of using various media to widely disseminate the latest knowledge to the medical industry was a concept that can be summarized by the term "patient education" for me, who specializes in diabetes. This "patient education" makes it possible for a small number of medical staff to pass on a lot of useful knowledge to a large number of patients and medical professionals.
My boss, Dr. Matsuoka, is an authority in the field of patient education. So, just by working for him, I had the task of creating many patient education media. I made patient education films, wrote scripts for patient cartoons, made videos, textbooks, educational guidelines, and diagnostic devices and aids for blood glucose monitoring and insulin therapy. I have already written more than 40 books as textbooks for patient education.
At the time, some of my college friends ridiculed me, saying, "Is that what a doctor does? at the time. But now, some of my textbooks have become sub-textbooks for diabetics. So, in the sense that I was able to contribute to the treatment of many patients in the form of "patient education" for many years using the media, I believe that my work was something that should have been done by a doctor.
In existing fields, existing companies and systems get in the way of new developments.
I proposed a hypothesis in the journal Lancet in 1992 that a blood glucose measurement method that draws blood outside the fingertip is feasible and should be accepted. This led me to develop an interest in blood glucose monitoring methods that reduce pain, and from 1994 to 1995, I worked for Sony Corporation on a project to develop a pessimistic blood glucose monitoring device. However, there were many obstacles to its development. Several large companies had applied for patents on a wide variety of laser wavelengths. In the end, the existing rights prevented us from proceeding with our research and development.
Also, in 1995, I developed a nutritional management program and released it to the world. It was "The Diet," a nutritional management software released by Nankaido. Immediately after its release, however, an unexpected change in the operating system (OS), Windows 95, came, and the program that had been developed under MS-DOS immediately became a legacy of the past. The two years of development efforts were in vain.
A painful experience in 1995 led me to the Internet.
It was because of this bitter experience that I began to think about the Internet as a career.
In a field where there are many competitors, or a field that depends on computer systems such as operating systems, unexpected situations can occur.
Therefore, we needed to come up with a solution to the problem that did not involve such risks.
While I was looking for a solution to this problem, I came across the Internet. It all started when the president of So-net suddenly visited me at my workplace in the second clinic of Sony Corporation. He knew that I had published a number of medical books, so he suggested that I use my experience to build a new information transmission system using the Internet.
At that time, the fact that the Internet was an OS-independent system was very attractive to me. The fact that I didn't have to worry about Windows 95, Mac, or other operating systems made me think that the Internet was a medium that could provide a great solution for fields such as the medical field where systems had to be built over a long period of time.
Also, the Internet was an untapped field. No one had any patents, so we could start with a clean slate and bring new ideas to life. Therefore, the fact that there were no prior patent restrictions was also attractive.
It was at that time that I immediately accepted President Horikome's proposal and started working for So-net. In hindsight, I think 1996 was a lucky year, because when we were facing a problem in patient education that was difficult to solve with existing systems, we found a powerful tool that could solve it.
Initially, I started out self-taught.
Nowadays, people in society appreciate that the Internet will be an important social infrastructure that will change the world in the future. However, in 1996, there were not many people who believed in it. Some predicted that it would be just a passing fad, like the "Captain System," and would soon collapse. There were also many people who did not recognize the value of the Internet as being no different from PC communications.
It was during this time that I was given the mission of the Internet. However, there were no success stories in the world at that time, so I had to start from scratch and study all the examples. Even if I wanted to master the HTM L language, there were no related books in the bookstores. Therefore, I was forced to learn HTML and new technologies such as Java on my own.
It was also necessary for me to deny my specialty, writing for books and magazines, so I reduced my book writing activities. I started to think about what would happen if I did everything I could do with books on the Internet. Then, I focused on applying my experience of success in various media to the Internet and changed my life so that I could put all my know-how into it.
It takes a lot of hard work to make your dreams come true.
The probability of success is less than one percent.
It's easy to just suggest what everyone else thinks, or what the pundits write in the newspapers. But there is a difference between being a dream speaker and being a dream maker, so if you don't know the difference, you will fail in the internet world.
The Internet is a world where it is difficult to differentiate between professionals and amateurs. The act of creating a website, for example, is something that anyone can do, whether they are an amateur or a professional, but because anyone can do it, it is difficult to create a differentiating value as a professional. And it's even harder to come up with a profitable business model. There are many start-up companies that have entered the internet business because they think it's easy.
There is also a lot of inexperience in the world of the internet. It is important to be wary of the opinions of those who pander to the media. In fact, the IT bubble of 1998-99 was used to fund a number of start-up companies in Japan and the USA, and medical websites were launched. However, most of these sites have now either closed down or are neck-deep in red ink. The chances of success are estimated to be less than 1%.
The idea of building together has come to fruition over time.
We were lucky enough to be able to set up Medipro (Medipro stands for Medical Profession) in 1996.
Firstly, I was fortunate in that some friends from leading medical publishers suggested that we work together to build a website. I was fortunate in that I had developed a relationship of trust with the publishers, which I had cultivated in the world of books and magazines. However, this did not stop me from making every effort to carry out my friend's requests and demands in a serious manner, so as not to break the trust that had been built up.
After four years, Medipro now has more than 200 members, including publishers and pharmaceutical companies. The site has become very popular, with over 40,000 users (members) and several thousand active visitors every day. This means that we are operating on a scale similar to that of a small medical society on a daily basis. Therefore, Medipro is committed to working hard every day to ensure that we do not disappoint the many people who visit us.
We were able to match the needs of the information providers with the needs of the recipients.
I was on the information side with medical publishers, but at the same time, as a doctor, I have the ability to think from the point of view of the recipient. Therefore, I thought that what I wanted as a doctor, was the thing that many doctors must also want. Therefore, I consulted with the publisher about the contents that I wanted on the Internet, and I was able to construct the system to offer it to many medical personnel widely one by one.
In order to find information quickly on the Internet, it is necessary that someone organizes the information provided by medical publishers and information providers (hereinafter referred to as IP for information provider) into categories and displays them in a way that is easy to find. In organizing the information, someone has to decide which information is of the highest quality and is needed by the greatest number of readers. In the early days of Medipro, my job was mostly to act as an anchor for this medical information.
The concept of Medipro is "a huge virtual cooperation city space for medical information".
Medipro, together with a number of health and medical book publishers and pharmaceutical companies, organizes and controls the quality of information. The result is a city of information, a Virtual Corporation City on the Internet, where a large amount of medical information is easily accessible. In particular, we have worked hard to ensure that only the best content is available, and that all our partners provide high quality information. In fact, no other medical website in the world has more than 70 leading companies providing information on a single site. When we present Medipro to medical professionals in the US, they are often surprised to find that it is a very well-designed Virtual Corporation City.
A virtual cooperation city space for everyone is Medipro
Much of the medical digital content that is useful to medical professionals has been brought together in Medipro, making it a convenient space for users. As well as a literature search and a large collection of specialist medical news, Medipro brings together all the information needed by medical professionals in Japan, from conferences and public information to job vacancies. If you are in the medical profession, you will find all the information you need here. It's no exaggeration to say that most of the leading medical journals and content in Japan are now available on Medipro.
And it's all too technical for non-medical people, so there is a synergistic effect, where the specialisation reduces the frequency of access by the general public, which in turn increases the quality.
“My Medipro" was born from a proposal from the pharmaceutical industry.
In Japan, drugs can only be advertised on websites reserved for medical professionals. The "My Medipro" system, with its "one-to-one" function, is a system that allows the correct advertising of medical products and the correct communication of their benefits to doctors. The one-to-one feature requires users to register a profile, and when viewing the content, each line of content is displayed differently according to the user's profile. In the profile, there is also a mechanism to identify medical professionals by a service code. By using this system, we were able to create a space for medical professionals only. This idea has been patented as a business model.
The implementation of this system was a great experiment, but many pharmaceutical companies wanted to experiment with one-to-one. In 1998, the world's first website for medical professionals using one-to-one functionality, My Medipro, was launched as a joint experiment with these pharmaceutical companies.
To get a service code, ask your reps
To make My Medipro a healthcare professionals-only space, we use a service code system. Medical professionals can obtain a service code by hand from a pharmaceutical company MR. The general public can't get them from the reps, so we can create a space that is only available to medical professionals. Once you have your service code, you can visit the My Medipro membership application page, register and become a member. There is no registration or membership fee. Recently, an increasing number of doctors and medical professionals have requested service codes for the purpose of accessing specific service content from pharmaceutical companies. You can ask your reps to collect multiple service codes for you and put them in your profile. The more service codes you collect, the more services you will be able to receive in the future.
The one-to-one system has many advantages for both users and information providers
My Medipro provides a common authentication system for multiple companies, so that medical professionals only need to remember one ID and password that they use frequently. This makes it convenient for busy doctors who cannot remember multiple IDs and passwords.
Medipro is gaining popularity by word of mouth, as people realize that the system is beneficial and convenient for all internet users - pharmaceutical companies, medical book publishers and users alike. Recently, the number of members has been increasing by about 3,000 per month, without any advertising in the media. We have already been approached by more than 100 publishers, pharmaceutical companies and medical equipment companies who are interested in providing information to us. We believe that within a year or two, we could have most of Japan's leading companies represented on Medipro.
“MR-kun" is the world's first full-fledged MR business support service.
The transfer of drug information from MRs to doctors and from doctors to MRs has been done inefficiently in the past, and despite the increase in the number of MRs, there has been a contradiction in the increasing restrictions on visits to doctors' offices. There was a strong demand from many pharmaceutical companies to use the internet to improve the efficiency of their MR operations.
“MR-kun" is a system that allows doctors and MRs to communicate with each other by displaying individual MR message banners on the front page of My Medipro. The success of this system is being watched not only by Japanese pharmaceutical companies but also by pharmaceutical companies around the world. This is because it will improve the work of MRs for pharmaceutical companies. However, the complete execution of this system is based on the traditional human relationship between doctors and reps. It will take a lot of experience and trial and error, not only on the part of the doctors but also on the part of the pharmaceutical companies, to ensure that the system runs smoothly. An increasing number of companies have decided to adopt the system from the outset in order to acquire the know-how as quickly as possible. The details of this system are explained in a series of four articles in the Medical Tribune from 24 August to the end of September.
Working at Medipro is like working in a university-like environment where you can do research and development
A project with a turnover of a few hundred million yen is not seen as a business in the business strategy of a global company like Sony Corporation, but rather as a social contribution project or research and development. For me, it is gratifying to know that a company as big as Sony is looking after a project that has a purely social purpose. In this sense, Medipro is a business model that was made possible thanks to the generosity of the Sony Group.
I also enjoy the working environment within the Sony Group, which for me is a bit like a university or research institute. In particular, the "don't imitate others" attitude and the "appreciate creating unique systems and knowledge" attitude are the same evaluation methods and values as writing an original paper at a university. So, working in the Sony Group can sometimes seem similar to working in a university. Some of my classmates and diabetes friends ask me why I don't belong to a medical school or a medical research institute, and the answer is that my work is similar to that of a university.
In recent years, we have also had a number of excellent staff members working as project members on Medipro's business plan. In addition, we have asked not only Sonnet, but also the group at Sony headquarters to set up a business office to support Medipro. As a result, a number of brains have recently come forward to advise Medipro on various matters. With the support of these brains, Medipro will be able to transform itself not only into a social enterprise, but also into a functioning business.
A social contribution that resulted in a successful business
Medipro was started by a doctor who wanted to use the internet to contribute to the wider medical community. The basic approach has always been to work with medical professionals who are serious about building a model that contributes to society. Essentially, I didn't want to do business, but I thought that if I pursued the right thing, it would naturally take the form of a business, and the best people and profits would follow. Fortunately, Sonnet has a system in place that supports this way of thinking. We have excellent staff who work hard every day for the same purpose. So, the challenge for the project is how far we can continue with the pure purpose of contributing to society.
Some people around me have pointed out that my goals are "too pure" for business. However, I don't think so. I believe that my efforts to contribute to the healthcare industry will be the driving force to change the future of healthcare. On the other hand, I do not believe that venture capitalists who spend all their time on stock options and fundraising, or who have no practical experience, can do any real work in the healthcare industry. In fact, many of these websites are all bluster and no substance. In the US, IT start-ups that are all bluster and no real benefit have either gone bankrupt or been bought out.
On the other hand, if you are in the Sony Group, you can find the latest Internet technology lying around. From my point of view, it's a treasure trove. There are so many options for how to apply it to the medical industry that I am at a loss. This allows us to create solid projects with a lot of substance. Our staff also find it rewarding to be exposed to the latest technology and information at a field level, which allows them to learn a lot. This is the kind of thing that is possible at Sonnet but not at a venture company. In other words, I feel fortunate to be part of the Sony Group, where I can apply the world's best IT technology at a much higher level, and where each member of staff can develop their skills several times over.
My attitude in the future will be to keep in mind the importance of the first principles
Recently, I have been asked to speak about Medipro in the media and I have been invited to give talks. The higher the expectations around me, the more I am questioned about my basic attitude towards the purpose of running this website, so we want to keep in mind our original intentions: to contribute to the healthcare industry and to educate patients. We hope to continue to develop Medipro as a project that will result in business, while keeping this attitude in mind.