Konami Sports & Life Chosen by METI for Research on
Healthcare-related Services
Initiative to Use IT to Increase Preventative Care and
Eliminate Discontinued Therapy

An initiative to be undertaken by a consortium represented by Konami Sports & Life Co., Ltd. has recently been chosen by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) for a research initiative as part of the Ministry’s 2010 Research for Regulatory Reform and Industry Creation in Healthcare-related Fields.

The consortium initiative aims to create new ancillary medical services through collaboration between healthcare organizations in the Kyoto and Osaka region using IT networking technology and to find solutions to issues of social concern including weak preventative healthcare awareness and discontinued therapy for individuals who have lost insurance coverage. It also aims to reduce the number of people in need of help under the public healthcare insurance system.

The consortium is known as the project to improve health and extend lives in Kansai and is a collaboration that includes Konami Sports & Life as well as medical organizations and insurance companies.

The consortium initiative’s main activities will include the following:

Support Services for Continuing Therapy
This program will provide ongoing therapy services for individuals in need of therapy whose medical insurance has been terminated because they have reached the maximum limit on benefits. Patients who need therapy are introduced by their doctors and receive continuing therapy thanks to IT-based information-sharing between medical organizations.

Preventative Healthcare Services for Healthy Seniors
This program will introduce health and wellness services to senior citizens who are not currently receiving preventative healthcare services under the public healthcare insurance system.

This regionally based program encourages preventative healthcare by contacting community governments and sharing information with doctors about persons who use the services in order to provide health-checks and so forth.

Konami Sports & Life not only intends to research, study, and demonstrate concrete solutions to the institutional and other issues that arise in the course of the project, but also aims to develop and extend nationally a model of collaboration between local service providers to meet the needs of an aging society.

Future announcements will provide details about the initiative’s ongoing activities.