VSee Telehealth Launches in Japan; Wins 1st Prize in Digital Health Solution for Super Aging Population
VSee launches in Japan; awarded 1st prize in digital health by Ministry of Trade and Economics at 1st Well-Aging Summit to build global partnerships that address healthcare and economic issues of a super aging population; disrupting attitudes of innovation for the elderly
SAN JOSE, Calif., Dec. 4, 2018 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- VSee, the telehealth company behind NASA International Space Station, Walgreens, MDLIVE, DaVita, Trinity, Ascension and 1200+ clients, has launched in Japan with great promise. It won 1st prize in digital health innovation at the First Well-Aging Society Summit in Tokyo sponsored by Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI).
VSee was also recently featured in Forbes Japan as one of the forefront digital healthcare companies transforming how the next generation delivers healthcare. Several months earlier, VSee was given a mainstage keynote for Health 2.0 Asia-Japan.
VSee's telehealth products and services are design-focused to simplify inefficient clinical workflows and to solve healthcare delivery problems. Through telehealth, healthcare practitioners and businesses are cutting costs, increasing patient engagement, and decreasing clinician burnout.
The flagship VSee Clinic is an online virtual care platform that provides integrated video visit, virtual care workflows, medical device and digital health tool plug-ins. It can be self-tailored for any use case from on-demand urgent care to eNICU monitoring to group wellness classes to post-surgical consults, telepsychiatry, and more.
VSee was one of nine startups from 6 countries that was invited to the Summit to pitch their digital health solutions. The panel of ten judges included president & CEO of Philips Japan Hiroyuki Tsutsumi, CIO of Harvard Medical School, Professor John D. Halamka, MD, and Health 2.0 Director-Japan Yumiko Nishimura.
VSee CEO Milton Chen says,"This was an unexpected honor for VSee. Our goal as a company has always been to make a huge impact for the betterment of our society. So we are very excited to work with Japan and its global partners to create digital health solutions that will transform the quality of life for the aging population."
Judge and session panelist Yumiko Nishimura says, "There was no debate about who the prize should go to. VSee was the first choice by far for the majority of the judges."
Well-Aging Society Summit - First Time To Globally Address Super Aging
METI has held several "Japan Healthcare Business Contests" and other events to discover and support startups and entities that can help solve the challenges that Japanese healthcare industries have been facing. The Well-Aging Society Summit, is METI's first international event to globally address the issues of a super aging society.
As a society known for the longevity of its people, Japan has entered a super-aged society ahead of other countries. Because of this, it has also had to earlier face a variety of social challenges from increases in social security expenses and patients suffering from lifestyle-related diseases or dementia to disparities in elderly access to medical care and a shortage of skilled nursing facilities as well as the human resources to run such facilities.
The Well Aging Society Summit Asia-Japan addresses these issues by showcasing venture businesses and Japan-based healthcare companies with robust development programs and R&D. This fosters global awareness and global partnerships as well as encourages other countries to invest in healthcare business in Japan. It believes that it is through global efforts thay innovative solutions can more quickly be developed to benefit all countries around the world.
Super Aging Calls For Innovation + Empathy
Unlike some societies which view the aging population as a burden on society, Japan is approaching it as an opportunity to innovate and to solve the happy problem of how to live out our longer life-spans with dignity and fulfillment. Joseph Coughlin, director of MIT's Aging Lab and author of The Longevity Economy, explains that these days "Our challenge is to ensure quality of life, for a century of life."
One of the issues Coughlin notes is that we tend to treat seniors as a problem to be solved rather than people with feelings and desires, "Whenever you start a research program around aging, it always devolves into falls, pills, and reminder systems... But it's incomplete: Older adults are people first, not a puzzle to be solved."
Our solutions, digital or otherwise, must also address human mental and emotional needs; not just physical needs. He gives an example, "We have houses that are aware of our well-being, systems making sure we haven't fallen, and toilets talking about what we ate. How about connecting some of those things to social networks or friends and family, so that a grandchild wants to know my cookie recipe, not just whether or not I took my beta blocker?"
Coughlin acknowledges that the baby-boomer generation is the one that is mostly responsible for the current cultural biases which relegate seniors to the edges of society. However it is also the same generation that is disrupting those biases. They are reinventing what it looks like to be an older adult and calling on society to give more consideration to the needs and desires of the elderly.
For example, the University of North Carolina Greensboro (UNCG) Gerontology and Entrepreneurship Cross-Disciplinary Program, together with Well Spring Retirement Community sponsored an Aging Services Innovation Competition for the express purpose of encouraging UNCG students to consider the needs of individuals age 50 and older. Some of the business ideas UNCG students generated include
- a product that lets family and caregivers customize playlists that wirelessly sync to a simplified stereo system for older adults,
- an online grocery shopping service with customizable to dietary assistance, and
- a tool or service that facilitates adventure and play opportunities for older adults, and eliminates the age barrier to outdoor adventure.
Whether we see these ideas come to fruition in the near future is yet to be seen. However, with global population of those 60 years of age expected to increase nearly 22% by 2050, all countries face the issue of how to solve the problems of a super-aged society.
Telehealth Is Key To Empowering An Aging Population
Whatever the solutions involve, it is clear that telehealth platforms and services such as VSee will play an important role in allowing older adults to live out the end of their lives well. As people age, their mobility decreases and healthcare needs increase. Telehealth greatly reduces the need for patients and clinicians to travel to see each other. Telehealth gives seniors greater access to all kinds of healthcare services.
Even today, amid the challenges of designing telehealth for older adults, telehealth is providing services such patient monitoring, online therapy, telemental health services, virtual diagnoses, medication management, and human companionship. The end result is that seniors can stay independent longer and enjoy meaningful and fulfilling lives to the very end.
About VSee
VSee is the telehealth company that makes doctors love doing medicine again. It is the company behind NASA Space Station, Walgreens, MDLIVE, DaVita, Trinity, Ascension and 1200+; as well as the parent company of This American Doc medical group--a physician-owned airbnb-like marketplace for telehealth staffing. VSee is known for its simple design, robust technology, highly versatile solutions, and personalized service. Visit vsee.com
SOURCE VSee
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