Creative Cures

Twelve innovators share their solutions at the ACCJ’s Healthcare x Digital Pitch Day Event.

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Startups convened once again in Osaka on February 13 for a chance to get Japan’s healthcare research to the people who need it through the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan (ACCJ) Healthcare x Digital (HxD) initiative. Now in its sixth year, the program spearheaded by the ACCJ Kansai chapter connects startups, academics, corporations, and government to develop ideas for community healthcare and individual patient care.

The 2026 HxD Pitch Event took place at Osaka’s Nakanoshima Qross and featured a panel discussion followed by two rounds of pitches from healthcare startups competing for five awards.

The event was cohosted by Nakanoshima Qross and supported by the US Commercial Service, part of the US Consulate General Osaka-Kobe. The top prize was a complimentary trip to the 2026 SelectUSA Investment Summit, a US Department of Commerce program that has generated more than $250 billion in new investment to date. This year’s summit ran May 3–6 in National Harbor, Maryland.

“The startups pitching today represent the best of Japan’s healthcare innovation,” Consul General Richard N. Larsen told the room at the opening of the event. “Your solutions address real challenges, and your willingness to compete on this stage demonstrates the entrepreneurial spirit driving progress in this sector.”

Hirokazu Shimoda, senior director at the Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development (AMED), previously worked at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and the Japan External Trade Organization’s San Francisco office. Leading the pre-event roundtable, he said that working groups are now operating across 17 fields to determine where Japan should concentrate its resources.

At the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference earlier this year, US investors kept asking him the same question: how AMED’s own subsidies could be used to coinvest in Japanese companies. He also pointed to Japan’s supporting industries—manufacturing, materials, robotics—as a real strength once paired with artificial intelligence (AI) and Japanese data, later noting that AMED’s funding is now extending to top-tier venture capital as well.

Japanese Healthcare: A Future Up for Debate

A panel discussion, moderated by Zimmer Biomet Director of Government Affairs Makoto Kawai, brought together Yasuhiko Iida, then of ACCJ President’s Circle member Eli Lilly Japan K.K., Dr. Okechi Oduori of Nakanoshima Qross, and Marisa Watanabe of the University of New South Wales, who joined remotely from Australia.

The conversation fell within HxD’s three standing focus areas: overcoming Japan’s urban–rural healthcare divide, reimagining the hospital of the future, and empowering patients to own their healthcare. As the discussion progressed, the topic turned to whether Japanese healthcare technology has to prove itself abroad before Japan’s own system will accept it.

Japan has strong basic research, Oduori said, but it isn’t as “gifted when it comes to social implementation,” which he described as getting high-quality research to the patients themselves.

Watanabe described a validation trap: Japanese corporate partners want proof of value before investing in technologies that first of all need investment to be tested.

“A lot of technologies worldwide are being lost because we just can’t get over that initial hurdle,” she said. One advantage, she noted, is already available: Australia’s approval process aligns closely with that of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), giving startups a faster on-ramp than the US process alone.

Japan’s acceptable margin of risk, Kawai argued, is effectively zero, which is why he told startups to prove themselves in other markets first.

Watanabe raised a second fix of her own for lower-risk categories. “[We need] a sandbox system where we can actually try to speed up approval processes for certain types of technologies that are less [of a] health risk,” she said, as an example pointing to fall-prevention technology that could be validated safely, given available countermeasures if something goes wrong, and processed faster as a result.

Oduori differed slightly, arguing that startups should work with regulators from day one. “There is always an opportunity that we can work closely with the regulatory authorities at the very beginning, incorporating them as you do your studies,” he said.

Kawai added: “It’s just easier for people to go outside, prove it, and come back with that proof. To get Japanese to jump off the boat, you tell them that everybody already has jumped off.”

The conversation ranged further, with L.E.K. Consulting Partner Christian Boettcher raising the long-standing tension between Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry over how fast to move on approvals. Eli Lilly Japan’s Iida argued that patients increasingly want quality of life rather than a fix for a disease, pointing to Asics as an example of a wellness-adjacent company with few avenues for talking to doctors or pharmaceutical companies.

A question from the floor turned to whether Japanese universities still favor publishing research over patenting it. Oduori said the situation has improved, with more universities now advising on intellectual property, but that patents held inside university walls still complicate industry collaboration.

By the end of the discussion, when an audience member asked who should actually guide a startup from concept to market, Oduori said that getting a startup to commercialization takes the same kind of cooperation that your fingers require when you eat with chopsticks.

“Know who is more important than know-how,” Kawai said, closing the panel.

ACCJ–Kansai Governor Kevin Yamaga-Karns, associate vice president of legal affairs at Eli Lilly Japan, then presented the panelists with certificates of appreciation.

Let the Games Begin

The pitch competition’s 12 healthcare startups presented their solutions to an expert panel of judges: Mari Ogihara of AstraZeneca K.K., Yasuhiko Iida of Eli Lilly Japan, Dr. Robert Brand of EY, Dr. Yu Moriguchi of Osaka University and Nakanoshima Qross, Akira Omae of The Kobe Shimbun and Anchor Kobe, and L.E.K. Consulting’s Boettcher. Competing this year were:

• SalivaTech Co., Ltd.
• Nonat Inc.
• I.W.G. Inc.
• PurinoScience
• Craif, Inc.
• MIG Inc.
• Heliex Inc.
• Quadlytics Inc.
• Ekei Labs
• Aman Wellness Solutions (AWS LLC)
• VisionPath
• Xupra

SalivaTech’s SalivaChecker, an AI-powered saliva test that screens for six cancers from a single sample, already serves more than 110,000 users. Chief Executive Officer Dr. Makoto Sunamura, a pancreatic surgeon at Tohoku University Hospital, framed the product as screening rather than diagnosis, with the company’s US launch built around CLIA-certified labs ahead of full FDA approval.

According to World Health Organization data cited by Nonat Inc., just 18 percent of high-risk pregnant women worldwide receive proper treatment. With that in mind, the company pitched a wearable device and an AI system for remote pregnancy monitoring.

I.W.G. Inc., founded by a team that previously scaled a medical AI startup to unicorn status—meaning a valuation of more than $1 billion—pitched two products: AI Referral, which standardizes referral and discharge data across formats, and DOCloud, a workflow and communications platform that the company said has already cut client data transfer time from four days to 40 seconds, alongside a 90 percent drop in human error. I.W.G. said it has been selected by the Mayo Clinic as the first and only Japanese company in that ecosystem.

No approved drug exists anywhere for sarcopenia, the natural loss of muscle tissue due to age, according to PurinoScience Chief Executive Officer Kotaro Hisamoto. He pitched an oral combination therapy built on a repurposed gout medication that Japanese research already links to lower sarcopenia rates combined with a marketed adenosine triphosphate, or ATP. According to cofounder Ken Okamoto, of the University of Tokyo, the precursor restores muscle energy through the body’s own purine salvage pathway.

Craif, Inc. brought a related pitch built on an already-proven distribution network: its urine-microRNA platform serves more than 50,000 users through some 2,000 clinics and 4,000 pharmacies, and its new product, miSignal Age, estimates biological age and cardiometabolic risk from the same single sample.

Half the people in their forties and fifties, MIG Inc. President and Chief Executive Officer Hidetaka Kai told judges, already show the first brain-cell changes of Alzheimer’s disease, with no symptoms at all. The startup’s solution to this is a six- to eight-minute virtual reality test. The results, Kai said, correlate closely with p-tau181, a blood biomarker for the disease. New Alzheimer’s drugs from companies such as Eisai, Biogen, and Eli Lilly exist, but patients often arrive at the hospital too late to use them, he said.

Heliex Inc., based in Akita Prefecture, pitched “health intelligence” based on CT scans for personal trainers and nutritionists.

Quadlytics Inc. built its pitch around the fact that an epilepsy diagnosis in Japan often means immediate loss of a driver’s license. The company’s development, the Epilepsy Alarm, is a wearable that reads heart-rate variability to predict a seizure one to 20 minutes before it occurs. The company cited more than $10 billion in annual US emergency costs tied to epilepsy hospitalizations.

Ekei Labs, based at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, pitched epigenetics chemistry paired with AI to predict drug trial success before a trial runs, claiming a 30 percent cut in trial costs, a 50 percent cut in trial failures, and 55 times more data per dollar spent than conventional methods.

Aman Wellness Solutions pitched a cross-border second-opinion platform connecting Japanese and US medical care. Founder Sahiora Nurujai was candid about a barrier few others mentioned, saying many Japanese hospitals are running deficits and so remain reluctant to devote domestic resources to foreign patients.

VisionPath Chief Executive Officer Jake Smith, a first-year student at Ritsumeikan University, pitched a smart walker inspired by his grandmother’s difficulty crossing a room for a glass of water. The company has not yet incorporated, but it has already secured a spring clinical trial with the city of Minoh.

Xupra closed the pitches with a foundational AI model built for pharmaceutical data, pitched through the story of a fictional drug rep, Yamada-san, coached before doctor visits and corrected after them. The company said it already runs a paid pilot with more than 400 users at a major pharmaceutical company.

And the Winners Are …

After deliberation, the judges announced five awards:

• SelectUSA Investment Summit Award: SalivaTech Co., Ltd.
• Anchor Kobe Award (Kobe City): Aman Wellness Solutions
• Nakanoshima Qross Award: PurinoScience
• Osaka Bio Headquarters Award (Osaka Prefecture): Quadlytics Inc.
• Osaka LifeScience Nexus Award: VisionPath

SalivaTech’s win secured its trip to the SelectUSA Investment Summit, following the path of past HxD winners such as Anaut Inc. and AMI Inc., both of which used their trips to Maryland to build connections with US investors and partners.

An Ongoing Effort

“This is not the last event,” Boettcher told the startups after announcing the results. “We had companies in the past that reapplied and then won. So, thank you for everybody’s efforts today, and congratulations to the winners.”

The next HxD event—Connected by Data, Powered by AI, Enabled by Technology: Reimagining People-Centered Care—is scheduled for October 30 at Nakanoshima Qross.

Healthy Momentum

As Lilly marks its sesquicentennial, the ACCJ President’s Circle member focuses on what comes next for Japan.

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It has been 150 years since American pharmacist, chemist, and businessman Eli Lilly founded Eli Lilly and Company in 1876. It was just over a decade after the end of the Civil War that the former Union Army officer turned his attention to creating innovative medicines of the highest quality. A century and a half later, the company that started in Indianapolis has become one of the world’s leaders.

In Japan, where ACCJ President’s Circle member Eli Lilly Japan K.K. has operated for more than half a century, the milestone is being treated as a responsibility to shape what comes next. The country is one of Lilly’s most important markets, thanks to its world-class scientific capabilities, highly skilled healthcare professionals, and exceptionally high standards of patient care.

The next chapter for Lilly in Japan starts with building the manufacturing muscle and partnerships with government, academia, and the tech world to close the gaps in diagnosis and access to ensure that medicines get to the patients who need them most.

That also means putting technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) to work to accelerate scientific discovery and improve how medicines are developed, manufactured, and delivered.

The ambition is to become the most trusted and impactful medicine company in Japan by 2030.

“Our success will be measured not only by business growth, but by the lasting difference we make for patients, the healthcare system, and society,” the company told The ACCJ Journal. “Our legacy is what we do next.”

Bridging Leadership

That next chapter arrives alongside a change at the top. In July 2026, Karla Alcazar became president and representative director of Lilly Japan, succeeding Simone Thomsen, who had led the organization since 2019.

Thomsen described Japan’s healthcare sector as having reached an important turning point during her tenure. The country’s strengths remain considerable, she said, including universal healthcare coverage, highly skilled professionals, strong scientific institutions, and a deep commitment to quality. All this comes as the healthcare environment has grown more complex with an aging population and a growing burden of chronic disease, which have raised the need for innovation.

While Lilly’s mission remains to bring innovative medicines to Japanese patients, continued uncertainty around pricing and reimbursement policies makes it increasingly challenging to sustain investment, accelerate innovation, and ensure timely patient access, she added. Going forward, a more predictable policy environment will be essential to support both innovation and long-term healthcare sustainability. 

For Thomsen, that means integrating Japan into global development, strengthening the company’s manufacturing network and supply resilience, raising awareness in areas such as obesity disease and Alzheimer’s disease, and building partnerships that help patients move from awareness to diagnosis and appropriate care.

She was especially proud to see Lilly Japan’s role extend beyond medicines, working with local governments, medical societies, and patient organizations to promote earlier diagnosis and build more connected care pathways.

“The progress achieved over these years was not the work of one leader,” Thomsen stressed. “It was created together by our employees and partners, and that shared journey is what I value most.”

Alcazar arrives in Kobe after nearly 20 years with Lilly. With most of those spent in Latin America and the United States, she brings with her a perspective shaped by very different markets.

What stands out to her in Japan is the strength of its universal healthcare system, the scientific rigor of its medical community, the emphasis on quality and safety, and the discipline with which organizations execute.

Set against a rapidly aging population, issues such as healthy longevity, chronic disease management, sustainable access, and earlier intervention have become especially urgent.

“My experience has taught me that sustainable progress requires both strong execution and collaboration across the healthcare ecosystem,” Alcazar explained. “I come to Japan with curiosity and humility.”

She said that the greatest opportunity is to expand early and consistent access to innovation for more people in Japan.

Through deeper collaboration and responsible use of data and technology, Japan can further improve early diagnosis, personalize care, strengthen treatment pathways, and continue to play an important role in global medical innovation, she added.

The harder task, in Alcazar’s view, is that scientific innovation alone does not automatically lead to better outcomes.

Patients can still face stigma, limited disease awareness, uneven access, and complex care pathways. The system needs a predictable, sustainable environment that recognizes the long-term value of innovation.

“We must work across sectors to remove barriers, strengthen the patient voice, and build an ecosystem in which advances in science can translate into meaningful improvements in people’s lives,” she said.

Confronting Obesity Disease

Nowhere is that approach more visible than in Lilly’s push on obesity disease, a chronic, progressive condition shaped by biology, genetics, psychology, the environment, and social circumstances.

The disease is linked to more than 200 serious complications, including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, sleep apnea, and liver disease.

Despite this, the condition remains widely misunderstood as simply a matter of personal responsibility or willpower. This misconception often creates stigma that can keep people from recognizing it or seeking care at all.

Japan’s aging population and its barriers to diagnosis and treatment make the country a particular focus for Lilly. Its role extends beyond developing medicines, the company said, to working with medical societies, healthcare providers, and policymakers to strengthen disease understanding, treatment pathways, and evidence generation, so that people can move from awareness to appropriate action.

Digital healthcare is central to that effort. The company argued that the biggest challenge is not simply access to treatment, since many people living with obesity disease never reach the point of seeking medical care in the first place. Earlier recognition can encourage people to seek professional advice before the disease leads to more serious complications.

Online medical consultations can help reduce psychological barriers to seeking care and improve access to appropriate healthcare. Lilly recognizes the potential of digital health solutions to enhance patient access to care and support better health outcomes.

Digital tools can also narrow regional gaps in access. They can connect patients, regardless of location, to appropriate care, since specialists and experienced providers are not evenly distributed across the country.

Looking beyond individual medicines, the next frontier is a more personalized approach with integrated treatment decisions reflecting disease severity, related conditions, patient needs and preferences, as well as old-fashioned clinical judgment.

Earlier recognition, stronger disease awareness, reduced stigma, and better-coordinated care across the healthcare ecosystem, the company argued, all matter as much as the medicines themselves in improving long-term outcomes.

The goal is to ensure people living with obesity disease can recognize the disease earlier, seek help without fear of stigma, and access the right care at the right time.

Lilly said Japan has an opportunity to build a more patient-centered ecosystem for obesity disease care that combines in-person care, digital health services, disease awareness programs, and community-based support. No single organization can achieve this alone.

Collaboration among healthcare professionals, policymakers, patient communities, academia, and industry, the company said, will be essential to enable earlier diagnosis, smoother referral pathways, and equitable access to evidence-based care.

Applied Intelligence

The other pillar of Lilly’s forward-looking push is the ever-growing field of AI, which is becoming a foundational capability across the full medicine value chain for the company rather than a standalone technology initiative.

In early discovery, AI allows scientists to analyze complex biology and chemistry at a scale and speed that were previously impossible. Its reach extends well beyond early discovery, supporting clinical-trial design, regulatory-document preparation, manufacturing quality, supply-chain resilience, and more precise patient engagement.

That integration was reinforced recently with the launch of a Co-Innovation AI Lab alongside Nvidia, pairing Lilly’s drug-development know-how with Nvidia’s computing horsepower.

The goal is to reinvent how scientific discovery happens by pairing AI-driven computational research with real lab experimentation so hypotheses get generated, tested, and refined in a continuous loop, far faster than before.

Ultimately, the company said, the purpose of the collaboration is to help address some of the most difficult challenges in medicine and accelerate scientific breakthroughs that can improve patients’ lives around the world.

AI will be a powerful accelerator of drug discovery and healthcare, according to the company. But it’s ultimately people who make the breakthroughs that improve patients’ lives. Curiosity, scientific judgment, creativity, and accountability remain fundamentally human traits.

As the company put it, AI does not replace scientists but, rather, augments human expertise. Scientists remain at the center of every decision, while AI helps analyze complex biology, generate insights, and explore possibilities at a scale that was previously impossible.

Over the long term, Lilly expects the greatest impact to come from connecting AI across a medicine’s entire life cycle: better trial design and patient selection in development, improved quality control and planning in manufacturing and supply, and, in research, a far wider exploration of biological and chemical possibilities.

For patients, the company noted, the ultimate value will not be the technology itself but what it enables: better scientific decisions, a greater probability of successful development, faster learning, and more reliable supply.

For organizations using AI, the company said that those who empower their people to use it responsibly and effectively will create the greatest value.

The Value of a Network

Lilly credits its ACCJ President’s Circle membership with a distinct role in supporting its work. The company described it as an important platform for dialogue, partnership, and shared learning across industries, one that allows it to engage with business leaders, policymakers, and the US Embassy,
Tokyo on issues touching both healthcare and the broader US–Japan economic relationship.

That matters, Lilly said, because many of today’s healthcare challenges cannot be solved by the pharmaceutical industry alone. Through the ACCJ, the company contributes its expertise to policy discussions, learns from other sectors, and helps develop collaborative initiatives spanning healthcare innovation, digital transformation, sustainability, inclusion, and women’s empowerment.

The premium membership also gives Lilly’s employees a chance to broaden their professional networks and engage with initiatives beyond the pharmaceutical sector.

“Ultimately,” the company said, “the ACCJ helps us strengthen trust and collaboration and advance our goal of creating a healthier, more innovative, and sustainable future in Japan.”

Peace of Mind

Tokyo Medical Concierge offers clear, compassionate care in English.

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Presented in partnership with Tokyo Medical Concierge

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Falling ill far from home can feel unsettling, even in a world-class metropolis such as Tokyo. I still remember the look of relief on a senior executive’s face when I arrived at his hotel room and introduced myself in English. “Doctor,” he said, “you’re the first person today who made things simple.” Encounters like this helped shape the philosophy behind Tokyo Medical Concierge.

My path into medicine began long before I opened a clinic. I grew up between Japan and the United Kingdom, moving to England when I was 12. Navigating an unfamiliar language and system as a child taught me early on what it feels like to be vulnerable in a new environment.

I later trained in medicine at the University of Nottingham and became a UK-board-certified general practitioner. I chose general practice because it allows you to care for people as human beings, not just diagnoses. In London, I learned how powerful communication is in medicine—how much relief patients feel when someone listens carefully, explains clearly, and stays with them through uncertainty.

When I returned to Japan and joined NTT Medical Center Tokyo, I began supporting a growing number of foreign patients who were overwhelmed by the Japanese healthcare system. Many were highly capable, well-traveled people—executives, embassy families, academics—yet the language barrier and unfamiliar processes made even simple medical issues stressful. I found myself acting not only as a doctor, but as a guide and an interpreter of two medical cultures.

These experiences ultimately led me to establish Tokyo Medical Concierge. Powered by Tokyo International Family Clinic, the service aims to bring clarity, calm, and international-standard care to people far from home.

Shaped by Empathy

Tokyo Medical Concierge exists because being unwell is universal, but feeling understood is rare. My background and combined UK training and Japanese clinical experience have shaped a service grounded in clarity, warmth, and trust. In a city that welcomes the world, we believe its healthcare should do the same.

Bridging Systems

Because I have trained and practiced extensively in both the UK and Japan, my work naturally bridges two medical worlds. Western primary care emphasizes conversation and shared decision-making, while Japanese medicine excels in diagnostics and meticulous accuracy.

International patients often tell me that having a doctor who understands both systems—and can navigate them on their behalf—provides immense reassurance. Tokyo Medical Concierge provides English-language primary care, hotel and residence visits, executive medical support, and coordination of specialist and hospital care for international patients in Tokyo.

Concierge Approach

Our philosophy is rooted in one idea: Patients heal best when they feel safe and understood. For international visitors, that safe place is often their hotel room or residence. Today, we collaborate with many of Tokyo’s leading luxury hotels as a trusted hotel doctor service, providing discreet, bedside care for guests who value privacy and convenience. Much of what we do is invisible by design. Many high-profile guests rely on us precisely because discretion is central to our work.

Continuity for Mobile Lives

Many of our patients move constantly among cities and countries. To support them, we provide English telemedicine, follow-up care, and ongoing guidance even after they leave Japan. Whether speaking with someone from an airport lounge or a hotel just before a major meeting, our goal is always the same: to make their health concerns feel simple, understandable, and manageable.

Hospital Support

Through Tokyo Medical Concierge, patients have access to advanced diagnostics and specialist care at institutions such as NTT Medical Center Tokyo. This gives embassies, corporate clients, and global travelers confidence that even complex medical needs will be managed within a robust, internationally credible framework.

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For appointments or inquiries, please contact: office@sasaeinternational.com

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