{"id":18107,"date":"2024-10-07T18:12:40","date_gmt":"2024-10-07T09:12:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.innovation-osaka.jp\/oih2026\/?post_type=library&p=18107"},"modified":"2026-09-27T17:20:57","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T08:20:57","slug":"library-13714","status":"publish","type":"library","link":"https:\/\/www.innovation-osaka.jp\/en\/library\/library-13714\/","title":{"rendered":"Naoki Okada"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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In Japan, ambulances are dispatched an average of 20,000 times a day, about once every five seconds, and the number keeps rising<\/strong> (*). fcuro Inc. develops software that uses the power of AI to save lives and reduce doctors\u2019 workloads in emergency care, where every second counts. CEO Naoki Okada is a practicing doctor with two roles: emergency physician and business owner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*Source: Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, \u201cCurrent State of Emergency and Rescue Services, 2023 Edition<\/a>\u201d (in Japanese)<\/p>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n

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AI image diagnosis saves the lives of trauma patients<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We develop software that uses AI to support the work of emergency physicians. Our top priority right now is developing ERATS, a whole-body search image diagnosis system in which AI supports diagnosis from CT (computed tomography) images.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Japan, there are 300,000 traffic accidents a year, and 10 people die every day. For a severe trauma patient, for example, the time left to save a life after arriving at the hospital by ambulance is just 15 minutes. Many patients arrive unable to speak, and just looking at the surface of the body does not tell you which organs are damaged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is where CT comes in. By imaging the body from head to toe with CT, the inside of the body becomes visible. There are 200 to 300 images on average, and as many as 1,000 in some cases. While performing resuscitation, doctors must look at those images, diagnose within a limited time, and complete treatment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No time, and things get missed. That is the honest voice of us emergency physicians. At night in particular, staffing is short, so we inevitably work in small teams, and it is impossible to handle every situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"fcuro
AI picks out only the abnormal areas from whole-body CT images, which sometimes number more than 1,000<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I have actually experienced cases myself where we were just a step too late. I developed ERATS wanting to eliminate even one such case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ERATS picks out only the abnormal areas from whole-body CT images within 10 seconds. Doctors can concentrate on reading the areas ERATS points to, so they can diagnose quickly and start treatment sooner. We are currently introducing it at facilities such as Osaka General Medical Center and Shizuoka Saiseikai General Hospital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the COVID-19 pandemic, we applied this technology to develop Japan\u2019s only COVID-19 CT diagnosis AI as a Cabinet Secretariat project and introduced it at several emergency centers. It was highly rated as the most accurate diagnostic software in the world, and a paper on it was published in Scientific Reports, a journal from the Nature group, the UK-based multidisciplinary science publisher.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n

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Developing the technology the field needs, together with colleagues in the field<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We currently have six employees and about 40 part-time staff, including engineers, all working remotely. The members are colleagues from clinical practice and engineers led by our director Inoue, who is also a childhood friend of mine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Employees who say \u201csee you later\u201d without batting an eye when I suddenly leave a meeting for emergency surgery, and colleagues in the field who see me off when I absolutely have to go on a business trip: it is thanks to them that I can keep working in clinical practice. Above all, we run the company valuing the trust between these colleagues in the field and our employees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why did I become a doctor? The reason is very simple: \u201cbecause I thought emergency medicine was cool.\u201d It lets you show your true ability when lives are in danger, from accidents, disasters, or sudden illness. I think it is a job that people need wherever you are in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And our company\u2019s strength is exactly that I am a practicing doctor. Because I work hard in the field every day, my colleagues support us. I believe that thinking about what technology is most needed now, while working in the same place as colleagues in the field, is the only way to create products that are truly needed. The medical institutions that have actually introduced our technology place their trust in the fact that I am a practicing doctor.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n

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Bringing Japan\u2019s hybrid emergency care by people and AI to the world<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCan machines think about medicine?\u201d This is the question we keep pursuing through our research and development of image diagnosis AI systems. We believe it is the key to building AI systems that are truly useful in the field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The medical systems called AI in the world, and the whole-body search image diagnosis AI we developed, are still just calculating machines. There is a big gap between them and the clinical thinking that medical professionals do every day, linking all kinds of test data with their five senses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are currently developing new types of AI, such as AI that predicts how a condition will change over time and conversational language AI that acquires medical knowledge. By integrating these findings, we want to build a multimodal AI system that thinks about medicine (an AI system that integrates and processes all kinds of clinical data and produces any output needed) and achieve hybrid emergency care by people and AI. We also aim to take this hybrid emergency care overseas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Medical disparities still exist in the world, and there are many countries where emergency care infrastructure is lacking. We want to bring our technology to those countries to save as many lives as possible and to help the doctors working there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And when that time comes, I want to save lives with our technology not as a businessperson, but as one doctor working in the field in that country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To make that dream come true, today, too, I want to work harder than anyone, both in emergency care and on the front lines of management.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n

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How We Used OIH<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In 2022, we were selected for the first cohort of the Kansai startup incubation program \u201cKIDOU\u201d<\/a>. Then in 2023, we won in the healthcare category of the 1st HeCNOS AWARD<\/a>, and we were confirmed to exhibit at the Osaka Healthcare Pavilion at Expo 2025 Osaka, Kansai, Japan. OIH is on the front lines of business, yet it is also a place where you can build warm relationships with peers and staff. That is what I love about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"fcuro
Selected from 173 companies for the Kansai startup incubation program \u201cKIDOU\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Interview date: Friday, May 24, 2024
(Interview and text: Aya Iwamura)<\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":13716,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_locale":"en_US","_original_post":"https:\/\/www.innovation-osaka.jp\/oih2026\/?post_type=library&p=13714","catch_copy":"Raising survival rates with the power of technology","company":"fcuro Inc.","sub_catch":"Using AI to pick out only the abnormalities from large numbers of CT images for rapid diagnosis"},"library-category":[136,191,164,189],"class_list":["post-18107","library","type-library","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","library-category-ai","library-category-hecnos-award","library-category-healthcare","library-category-kidou","en-US"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.innovation-osaka.jp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/library\/18107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.innovation-osaka.jp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/library"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.innovation-osaka.jp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/library"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.innovation-osaka.jp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.innovation-osaka.jp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"library-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.innovation-osaka.jp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/library-category?post=18107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}