What is CHANGE?
Why is this project needed?
- To address Japan's declining birthrate and aging population and to extend healthy life expectancy -
Project “CHANGE” is an initiative to promote co-creation between medicine, engineering, and nursing to bring innovation to the nursing field. The project was endorsed as the JST COI-NEXT Program in Kawasaki in 2022 and aims to realize a resilient, healthy, and long-lived society over a period of 10 years. In Japan, where the birthrate is declining and the population is aging, the burden of medical expenses is expected to increase to 1.5 times the current level by 2040, and it is imperative to prepare for this increase. As a result of interviews conducted in planning the project, many issues in the field of care emerged. For example, whereas nurses are available 24 hours a day to attend to patients in hospitals, in community and home care, family members, and in some cases the patient himself/herself, often take on this role, and the quality of care and the environment differ from home to home. Against this background, it is essential to improve the quality of community and home care to extend healthy life expectancy, and there is a need to improve the care competency (the ability to care) of citizens and provide easily accessible tools. In response to this challenge, this center aims to create innovative technologies, products, and services that meet the needs of nursing care by incorporating an engineering perspective. We invite participating companies to develop prototypes, and through collaboration with practitioners in charge of nursing care, we aim to deliver products to the field promptly. On November 1st, 2024, we established "Kawasaki Care Design Consortium" to promote care innovation by creating a space in Kawasaki for empathy and demonstration of “Nursing x Engineering.” Furthermore, although various barriers such as the healthcare system and healthcare cost issues are expected to arise in implementing new value to society, we plan to overcome these challenges by promoting dialogue and co-creation from the product and service conceptualization stage through cooperation among local governments, citizens, healthcare professionals, and companies.
Vision of Project CHANGE
Realization of "Society of Resilient Healthy Longevity"
"CHANGE" is an Industry-Academia-Government co-creation program and one of "COI-NEXT" projects
The Program on Open Innovation Platforms for Industry-Academia Co-Creation (COI-NEXT) is an industry-academia collaborative program in which universities and other institutions take the lead in formulating a vision for future society and promoting research and development to realize this vision, while aiming to form self-sustaining centers. Launched in FY2020, the program is designed based on the “vision-driven, backcasting-type of R&D” of the Center of Innovation (COI) program. As the role of universities in creating innovation is growing in importance, it is necessary to solve current and future issues with new knowledge and collaboration with stakeholders. To this end, it is essential to build an innovation ecosystem through industry-academia-government co-creation with the government's priority support. In this program, a vision for a future society based on the SDGs will be established as the center's vision, involving a variety of stakeholders, including universities, industry, local governments, and citizens. Toward the realization of this vision, the program will promote research and development through a backcasting approach and the establishment of a sustainable industry-academia-government co-creation system in an integrated manner. Through this initiative, we will promote the formation of hubs by leveraging the strengths of universities and other institutions, contributing to national growth and regional development, while promoting the transformation into a knowledge-intensive society.
Origine of the name "CHANGE"
As the Chinese characters indicate, nursing is about caring with hands and eyes. However, in a super-aging society where the number of patients is increasing and the number of medical professionals is decreasing, unless more human hands are supplemented by technologies and/or engineering systems, the burden on care workers will increase, leading to exhaustion in the field. The logo above is inspired by COI-NEXT's catchphrase, “Change,” and adds a playful twist with “CHANGE” when the “T” is layered over the “C” in “CHANCE,” as well as the “CHANCE” of apricot orange, floating like the morning sun, from “Blue Ocean,” which symbolizes an undeveloped market. We see the present time as a CHANCE (opportunity) and will strive to change society through our superior Technology and Talent, as well as Tolerability and Thoughtfulness.