Director of SDX Research Institute, Jinseiwakai Medical Group
Physiotherapist
Kyohei Daimon
He joined Kishiwada Eishinkai Hospital (now Kishiwada Rehabilitation Hospital) in 2016 and became the head of the department there in 2020. He became a researcher at the Seiwakai Group SDX Research Institute in 2021 and director of the same institute in 2023. He completed a master's course at Kio University Graduate School and is certified as a doctoral research instructor at Kyoto University Graduate School. "I was a member of the soccer club in junior high and high school, and had many opportunities to receive treatment from physical therapists due to injuries. I also lived with my grandparents for a long time and wanted to be involved in services for the elderly, so I became a physical therapist."
The Seiwakai Group, which operates rehabilitation hospitals and nursing care facilities, has established the SDX Research Institute to promote operational efficiency and cost reduction at medical institutions as part of its efforts for medical digital transformation. Kyohei Daimon, who will serve as director of the institute from 2023, will talk about the institute's structure, Our Business, and achievements to date.
The SDX Research Institute is a DX promotion department established three and a half years ago within the Seiwakai Group, which operates over 40 rehabilitation hospitals and nursing care facilities across the country, with the aim of fusing rehabilitation and digital technology. When the institute was launched, I moved from a managerial position at a rehabilitation hospital to become a researcher, and was appointed director in April 2023.
Currently, in addition to one full-time researcher, we have 18 physical therapists, occupational therapists, and speech-language-hearing therapists from nine rehabilitation hospitals in the Kansai region working as part-time researchers twice a month. Thanks to the part-time researchers working in multiple positions, collaboration with each hospital has improved considerably, and I believe a virtuous cycle has been created in which the researchers learn at the research institute and then apply what they learn to their hospital work.
The research institute is working on two tasks: consulting for group-related facilities, and joint development and implementation of digital products that utilize AI. Details of the work are shown in Table 1.
Consulting services include creating research plans, providing research advice and partial research contracts, statistical analysis, and other research support, as well as Instagram management support for public relations, and creating recruitment flyers and pamphlets, training and academic presentation materials, and promotional videos. The goal is to contribute to long-term improvements in business efficiency.
Furthermore, during the course of the above-mentioned consulting work, we discovered that when creating materials and flyers to provide to patients and their families, there were issues such as a lack of medical illustrations, unclear copyrights, and the need for usage fees, making the creation of materials a significant burden. Therefore, we launched "MediPic," a website for medical illustrations, based on the concept that "everything from website construction to illustration creation should be done by medical professionals." We believe this will reduce the workload of medical professionals and reduce the anxiety of patients and their families by providing easy-to-understand materials. MediPic's strengths lie in its open access, allowing anyone to use it freely, and its ability to provide consistent illustrations. We are currently gradually increasing the content in response to requests from medical professionals.
Instagram, which is used by hospitals, plays an important role not only as a gateway to increasing brand awareness and recruiting activities, but also as a means of sharing information within the group. Researchers at SDX Research Institute, who have a total of over 100,000 followers on their personal social media accounts, are utilizing their knowledge to provide comprehensive support for social media management for the four group hospitals in cooperation with an external company. In addition, we are focusing on accumulating knowledge and data and building an operational system so that social media management can continue even after the consulting service has ended.
In September 2024, a survey of the Instagram followers of 1,243 hospitals registered with the Association of Kaifukuki Rehabilitation Wards revealed that three Seiwakai Group facilities were ranked in the top 10 (according to SDX Research Institute). We believe this result will motivate hospital staff to continue to share their views.
Currently, there are three AI-based developments underway.
The first is an AI app developed independently by the institute. There are various rules and manuals within hospitals, and checking them is a significant burden. In particular, in the field of rehabilitation, there is a wide range of evaluation and treatment methods, and it takes a lot of time and effort to keep up with the latest information. We are developing an AI app to solve these issues.
The second project is the joint development of a generative AI solution specialized for the rehabilitation field. We collaborated with Pleap Inc. and its group hospitals to develop a generative AI model for "medimo," an AI tool that automatically creates medical record manuscripts from medical audio recordings, specializing it for the rehabilitation field. Using "medimo" requires only reviewing and correcting existing medical records, aiming to reduce omissions, shorten creation time, and ease the workload. In October 2024, this project won the Best Project Award (Small & Medium category) and the PMI Asia Pacific Award, a special award, at the PM Award 2024 held by the Project Management Institute (PMI) Japan branch, for "Development of a generative AI solution specialized for the rehabilitation field."
The third project is the introduction of an avatar system and the development of AI to be used in that system. The aim is to optimize labor by having AI act as avatars and one staff member operate multiple avatars. First, we plan to systemize the explanations given by nurses at the time of admission and the hospital facility guidance.
In Japan, there are concerns that rising medical costs will affect the overall balance of social security costs and ultimately lead to a decline in the quality of medical care. I personally have a strong desire to be involved in improving this issue.
Medical DX is said to contribute to improving the quality of medical care, streamlining the work of medical professionals, and reducing their burden, but hospitals face challenges such as rising labor costs and the fact that even when they introduce the latest equipment, it does not directly affect hospital remuneration, and compared to other industries, it cannot be said to have progressed sufficiently. We would like to use our group's economies of scale and an environment that allows us to explore needs directly on-site to proceed with verifying the effectiveness of DX.
Another major goal is to contribute to patients. We would like to advance efforts that apply digital technology to change the perception that "rehabilitation requires hard work" to "before you know it, you've been working hard."
▼SDX Institute
https://seiwakai-dx.jp
▼MediPick
https://medipic.jp
Director of SDX Research Institute, Jinseiwakai Medical Group
Physiotherapist
Kyohei Daimon
He joined Kishiwada Eishinkai Hospital (now Kishiwada Rehabilitation Hospital) in 2016 and became the head of the department there in 2020. He became a researcher at the Seiwakai Group SDX Research Institute in 2021 and director of the same institute in 2023. He completed a master's course at Kio University Graduate School and is certified as a doctoral research instructor at Kyoto University Graduate School. "I was a member of the soccer club in junior high and high school, and had many opportunities to receive treatment from physical therapists due to injuries. I also lived with my grandparents for a long time and wanted to be involved in services for the elderly, so I became a physical therapist."
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