Outline

Purpose of Establishment of the Research Centre of Next-Generation Health Technology

As Japan has become the world’s first super-aged society, there is a strong need to extend healthy life expectancy from various perspectives, including sustainable economic development and improvement of the quality of life (QoL) of the Japanese people. There is no doubt that advances in medical science will contribute greatly to the realization of this goal, but we also need to develop medical devices that enable innovative treatments and daily health data acquisition, social and urban design to change the behavior of citizens for health promotion, including zero-tier prevention, and early diagnosis in the pre-disease and potential disease phases using cutting-edge information science. Interdisciplinary research that integrates various fields related to health, medicine, and welfare is also indispensable. As the sole comprehensive national university located in Kanagawa Prefecture, we conduct research with an eye to social implementation in collaboration with the policies of the prefecture and other local governments. Also in the areas of health, medicine, and welfare, we have outstanding seeds and are promoting practical research in such fields as special support education, medical device development and management, basic technology for regenerative medicine, bio-signal analysis technology, medical devices and robots, AI analysis of medical data, and health care Mobility as a Service (MaaS). On the other hand, looking at the regional situation surrounding the Yokohama National University, the creation of a regional society centered on health technology is steadily progressing, and the region expects the University to promote not only research and development but also strong industry-academia-government collaboration with a view to social implementation and the formation of an ecosystem. With this background, we have established this center as an organization that will organically and effectively take charge of regional cooperation, industry-academia-government collaboration, and medical-industry collaboration, with the goal of bringing together the seeds of our university’s health technology in general, including health, medicine, and welfare, and of becoming a hub connecting industry, academia, and government in the prefecture to promote world-leading interdisciplinary research in this area.