SoCHAS, a multilingual medical information system, is an app for tablet devices that allows foreign visitors to Japan, who find themselves in hospitals, to select their language then answer questions in an interactive format at the various stages of the process they encounter: consultation, examina-tion, testing, accounts, or prescription.Take the case of a user who presents with a cough: after the patient selects answers to the questions “What sort of cough?” and “When did the symptoms first appear?” the app displays a provisional diagnosis and the relevant depart-ment for treatment. In effect, SoCHAS enables wide-ranging communication even for patients unable to speak a word of Japanese or English. The force behind SoCHAS, Takaoka, recalls the genesis of the project: “The spark was my participation in the Medical Care Information Study Group, with members of the Sophia University Faculty of Science and Technology Alumni Asso-ciation, in 2013. Until then I had been developing apps and researching databases specialized in environment and educa-tion, but not in the medical field. However, through discus-sions with medical professionals, my eyes were opened to the importance of medical information systems.” A related development was the signing of a partnership agreement, in the summer of 2014, between Sophia Univer-sity and the Organizing Committee of the Tokyo 2020 Olym-pic and Paralympic Games. This marked the beginning of joint initiatives by faculty members and staff to harness the university’s unique strengths. “2014 was a year that saw a record number of foreigners visit Japan. I recognized that they were having a lot of trouble in Japanese hospitals while they were here. Back then, transla-tion in the field of tourism was relatively precise, but in a specialized sphere such as medicine, accuracy was still rather low.”Takaoka successfully applied for Sophia University research funding under the Faculty and Staff Members Joint Innova-tion Research Fund (FY2014-2015), and began to develop in earnest a multilingual processing system that could be used in the medical, nursing, welfare, and senior care fields.“At Sophia, we have not only a Faculty of Foreign Studies but also a Department of Social Welfare and a School of Social Welfare, and in 2011 a Department of Nursing was added. Moreover, as all faculties are found on the same campus, I felt I could undertake the development in close collaboration with each field.”The project began with seven faculty and staff members, but by the time of the application for FY2016-17 funding, the number had increased to 17. Just two years or so later, the beta version was complete. As external marketing gained mo-mentum via exhibitions and demonstrations at forums, the SoCHAS Promotion Consortium was established in 2017 to increase uptake of the app. Around the same time a trial of a health center version of SoCHAS was launched for foreign students visiting the So-phia Health Center. In July 2018, another trial began at St. Marianna University School of Medicine, Toyoko Hospital and soon after, a number of other companies and hospitals began to ask if they could trial the app. “When it starts being used in hospitals, support and continu-ous maintenance need to be in place in case trouble arises. University’s First Venture Business for Real-World Traction Smoothing the Way for Foreigners in Hospitals15Research
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