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Web Posted on: August 24, 1998

Research and Development of Assistive Technologies in Japan

Shigeru Yamauchi and Tadashi Satoh National Rehabilitation Center for the Disabled Namiki 4-1, Tokorozawa, Saitama, Japan 359

1. Introduction

Aged population over 65 years old in Japan was 14.8% in 1995. It will continue to increase up to 27.4% and 32.3% in 2025 and 2050, respectively[1]. It was only 4.9% in 1950.. This rapid increase in aged population is one of the most crucial social issue in Japan. Aged population who need nursing care amounts to about 2 million, which will increase to 2.8 million in 2000 and 5.2 million in 2025. To meet this increasing demand for nursing care, Golden Plan was initiated in 1989 and expanded to New Golden Plan in 1994. Nursing care insurance system starts from 1998. A decrease in young working power and an increasing demand for better quality of life in service delivery makes assistive technologies indispensable.

2. Legislation for R&D of Asssitive Technologies

In 1993 the Technical Aids Law was enacted. This law aims to develop and deliver assistive technologies, which compensate functional limitations of aged and disabled persons. It also emphasizes that R&D of assistive technologies will lead a new industry in the 21st century. To this end it defines responsibility of central and local governments, and private sector such as manufacturers, distributors and relevant institutions.

The central government, Ministry of Health and Welfare(MHW), and Ministry of International Trade and Industry(MITI), is defined to be responsible for establishing basic policy for R&D of assistive technologies. Responsibility of MHW is defined as (1) subsidy for R&D expense and popularization, (2) compilation and dissemination of information on assistive technologies, and (3) evaluation of usability of assistive technologies. MITI is responsible for (1) subsidy of R&D expense, and (2) compilation and dissemination of industrial technology relevant to assistive technologies. Local governments are responsible for dissemination of information. Private sectors are responsible for delivery of high quality equipment to satisfy individual needs.

MHW combined Golden Plan and the Technical Aids Law to construct information networks for dissemination of knowledge on assistive technologies. It plans to install Practical Health Care Training and Dissemination Center in each of 47 prefectures and 13 major municipalities. This is a center administered by local government to train care workers. Its function includes demonstration, consultation, and dissemination of information on assistive technologies. This circumstance is suitable for training care workers using assistive technologies. Forty-three centers have been already established and 51 centers will be active before end of 1998[2]. They are playing the central role for utilization of assistive technologies in each area.

In New Golden Plan MHW plans to establish 10000 In-home Care Support Centers, which includes the technical aid center, equipped with catalogues and common assistive technologies. They are normally installed in nursing homes or technical aids shops. Care workers serve for consultation on assistive technologies. MHW has already established 6172 centers and plans to increase to 7964 centers before end of 19982..

3. Governmental Programs on R&D of Assistive Technologies

3.1 Ministry of Health and Welfare

The Technical Aids Law states that MHW should provide subsidy for R&D of assistive technologies utilizing a fund of Social Welfare and Medical Service Cooperation. This scheme is managed by The Association for Technical Aids(ATA). ATA launched R&D subsidy scheme in 1989 and MHW expanded it based on the Technical Aids Law. Every year ATA adopts suitable R&D projects from applications. The target equipment should meet and assist user's needs in daily life. The subsidy covers R&D expenditure and does not cover commercialization cost. It provides financial aide for R&D projects

  • to develop a product utilizing new technology or new materials
  • to develop a new product using existing technology
  • to improve an existing product
  • to develop a new system composed of existing products
  • to improve existing production process

The adopted project should complete within 3 years, and the total subsidy fund should be less than 80 million yen. ATA scheme also provides the subsidy to cover the survey and investigation cost on assistive technologies with less than 5 million yen and within 2 years.

The applied and adopted projects in these nine years are summarized in Table 1. The numbers of applications have steadily increased and exceeds over one hundred recently. About 30 projects are undertaken, including continued and newly adopted ones. With the budget fund of about 300 million yen for 30 projects, average subsidy fund is about 10 million yen each year.

Table 1. The applied and adopted projects in ATA subsidy scheme[3]

Year 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 Total
Applied 41 39 31 55 69 82 98 117 119 650
Adopted 8 10 10 12 12 15 13 9 10 99
Continued projects 0 8 15 13 19 16 17 16 14
Budget(million yen) 69 129 303 290 302 294 369 324 347 2427

Types of awardees are shown in Table 2[3]. More than 80% of the awardees are companies. This means that this subsidy scheme is mainly directed to commercialization of the products. Manufacturers of assistive technologies used to be small businesses and most of the awardees are small to medium size companies. It is noteworthy that giant enterprises such as Matsushita Electric Co., and Hitachi are included recently. Consortium in this table means the one formed by local small businesses. Most of them have no experience in assistive technologies, but they normally include professionals in local rehabilitation institutions. We see a trend that new companies are trying to find out their business opportunity in this field.

Table 2. Types of awardees in ATA subsidy scheme (1989-1997) [3]

Number Ratio(%)
Company 74 82.2
Consortium 3 3.3
University 2 2.2
Research institute 3 3.3
Rehabilitation institution 8 8.9
Total 90 100

Types of assistive technologies in these projects are summarized in Table 3. It is seen that number of applied proposals for mobility related equipment, sum of wheelchairs and products for transfer, amounts to 240 and covers 37% of total applications. High preference to mobility related equipment is also seen in the high adopted/applied ratio. This implies that difficulty in mobility is most significant in current living environment in Japan. This includes not only difficulties in old and inaccessible buildings and urban structure, but also ones derived from Japanese way of life in traditional homes. Several of them are already commercialized and their design mostly assumes the Japanese way of life.

Table 3. Types of assistive technologies in the projects (1989-1997) [3]

Applied Adopted Adopted/Applied
Beds and related products 31 2 6.50%
Products for bathing 67 5 7.50%
Wheelchairs 103 22 21.40%
Products for transfer 141 22 15.60%
Products for urination and/or defecation 59 8 13.60%
Products for communication 89 16 18.00%
Other products 131 15 11.50%
Investigations 39 9 23.00%
Total 650 99 15.20%

Out of 56 projects completed during 1989 and 1995, 23 products are already commercialized. Though this does not necessary mean that all of them are commercially successful, we consider this rate of commercialization is high.

Table 4. Number and ratio of commercialized products developed in 1989-1995[3]

number Ratio(%)
Already commercialized 23 41.1
Preparing for commercialization 5 8.9
Under improvement 11 19.6
Quit R&D 17 20.3
Total 56 89.9

3.2 Ministry of International Trade and Industry

3.2.1. National Research and Development Program for the Medical and Welfare Apparatus

National Research and Development Program for the Medical and Welfare Apparatus (NRDPMWA) is sponsored by MITI and managed by Technology Research Association of Medical and Welfare Apparatus (TRAMWA).. This is an R&D funding in a contract basis and they are 4-5 year's projects with R&D expenditure of several hundreds million yen. New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization(NEDO) collects proposals for development. NEDO and MITI work out projects and give contract to TRAMWA. The members of the TRAMWA share the work among them. Basic research for the project is studied at a laboratory of Agency of Industrial Science and Technology (AIST).

This program has finished 39 projects since 1976, including 18 medical equipment and 21 assistive technologies. Current projects on assistive technologies are:

  • Esophageal vocalization aid system
  • A robot for carrying food trays to the aged and disabled
  • Evacuation-support system
  • Multimedia system for the disabled

Comprehensive support system for design and operation of wheelchairs

Thirteen products have been commercialized in eight projects. They are listed in table 5, together with the manufacturers[4].

Table 5. Commercialized products developed by NRDPMWA[4]

Project Equipment Manufacturer
Modulated motorized wheelchair Motorized wheelchair Suzuki Motor Co., Ltd.
Braille duplicating system Braille master Matsushita Electric Industries Co., Ltd.
Foam ink Toppan Printing Co., Ltd.
Gait pattern analyzer for the disabled Position sensitive detector / position sensor system Hamamatsu Photonics K. K.
Force plate Kyowa Electronic Instruments Co., Ltd.
Multifunctional bed for the bedridden Separated urinal / Motorized, patient-controlled bed with toilet Paramount Bed Co., Ltd.
Vocal and speech training device Vocal and speech training device Matsushita Communication Industries Co., Ltd.
Position sensor Rion Co., Ltd.
Three-dimensional working chair Three-dimensional working chair Imasen Engineering Cooporation
Automatic body temperature adjuster Cool best Phoenix Co., Ltd.
Middle ear implant Middle ear implant Rion Co., Ltd.

3.2.2. NEDO subsidy scheme

NEDO launched a new subsidy scheme for R&D of assistive technologies based on the Technical Aids Law. With this scheme NEDO provides the financial subsidy up to two thirds of total R&D expenses and less than 10 million yen. The project should complete within 3 years, similarly to ATA scheme. NEDO emphasizes participation of small businesses. Table 6 shows that 38 out of 56 adopted projects are provided to small businesses[5]. It is also noteworthy that more than 50 % of the completed project are commercialized in this scheme.

Table 6. Applications in NEDO subsidy scheme [5]

1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 total
applications 64 54 77 128 123 446
adopted 13 6 9 13 15 56
small businesses in the adopted 8 4 7 11 8 38
completed 0 8 10 12 0 30
commercialized 0 0 4 8 6 18

3.3. Science and Technology Agency

Science and Technology Agency (STA) provides Special Co-ordination Funds for Promoting Science and Technology from STA (SCFPST) which is an inter-ministry research budget and is administered by Science Council of Japan. STA has provided research funds in various schemes under this fund, including the one provided to individual researcher in national research institutes as a personal basis. It also provides three to six year's lasting large scale research project with three to five hundred million yen per year. This type of R&D projects should include national research institutes of more than two ministries.

In 1995 SCFPST launched a new scheme of Basic Research for Life and Society, which intends to promote research relating to needs of the people and community, and to promote research utilizing the regional characteristics and the geographic features. One of the main field is basic research for aged and disabled persons. This scheme is for R&D projects of three to six year's period and the budget for each project is about three hundred million yen per year. Two projects relevant to assistive technologies are undertaken at this time.

One is Assistive Engineering for Participation of Older People and Persons with Disability, which is proposed and managed by one of us (S. Yamauchi). This was launched in 1996 and will be reviewed at the end of this year. This project aims at development of advanced assistive technologies for social participation and QOL of older people and persons with disability. Social and physical environments are also indispensable factors for utilization of assistive technologies and we include studies on principles of living environment and social system. At the same time, we intend to reorganize rehabilitation engineering into assistive engineering. Key concept of this reorganization is engineering for QOL. In other words, we consider it vital to establish assistive engineering as a new engineering discipline with paradigms of QOL, human dignity, and participation of older people and persons with disability.

Another is Ageless Environment Technology, which is proposed by a group of researchers lead by Dr. S. Kose of Building Research Institute. This project was launched in 1997 and aims at development of principles of universal design in industrial products, living and working environment and transportation system.

4. DAISY --- An Example of International Cooperation

We consider that international cooperation is indispensable in R&D of future assistive technologies. We have several difficulties in this respect, but recently we have a successful cooperation. DAISY, Digital Audio-based Information System, is software developed in 1993 by Labyrinten Data AB for the Swedish Library of Talking Books and Braille (TPB). Plextalk is a prototype dedicated CD-ROM based talking book player developed by Shinanokenshi Co., Ltd. Both parties decided to merge in 1995 to launch an international project to develop an open standard for next generation talking book system based on DAISY. With this cooperation DAISY project was successful to record highly compressed digital speech signal on CD-ROM. With this software one can directly access to any part of a talking book directly, utilizing functions of table of contents, index, and/or paging.

The project is now managed by the DAISY Consortium, consisting of 10 full members and seven associate member organizations. Full members cover Australia, Denmark, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, U. K., and United States. Associate members include Belgium, Canada, Columbia, Finland, Hong Kong, Norway, and South Africa. First commercialized Plextalk came onto the market this spring.

DAISY Consortium is now in cooperation with the Section of Libraries for the Section of Libraries for the Blind (SLB) of the International Federation of Libraries Associations and Institutions (IFLA). It has identified the producer's requirements, while the European Blind Union (EBU) set out user's requirements. DAISY Consortium has established the official relationship to the World Blind Union (WBU) and the SLB. Thus, DAISY is now becoming a de facto standard in digital talking book.[6]

We should finally point out that Plextalk was awarded NEDO subsidy in 1995, and ATA subsidy in 1996-1997. Thus, Japanese government has made a major contribution to this international cooperation.

Acknowledgement

This work was partly supported by Special Co-ordination Funds for Promoting Science and Technology from STA, Japan

Literature

1. White Paper of Ministry of Health and Welfare, MHW 1997

2. Outline of 1998 budget of Health and Welfare Bureau for the Elderly, MHW,
http://www.mhw.go.jp/topics/h10-kyoku/roujin-h/t0120-10a.html

3. R&D Subsidy from Association for Technical Aids, A flyer on ATA subsidy scheme, ATA, 1997

4. Toward the Realization of a True Welfare society, Technology Research Association of Medical and Welfare Apparatus, 1997

5. R&D Subsidy from NEDO, A flyer on NEDO subsidy scheme, NEDO, 1997

6. H. Kawamura, Symposium on Assistive Engineering for Older People and Persons with Disability, January 8-9, 1998, National Rehabilitation Center for the Disabled