What did you discover or learn during the joint project?

Iida: The Lab thinks of things we could never achieve, figures out what the front lines need, and actively works to collect information that a development company like us could never get no matter how hard we tried. And because they are always guided by their mission to create better nursing care in Japan five or ten years down the road—never just for the sake of Sompo Care—I realize again just how narrow my view is every time I talk to them. On one hand I walk away a bit deflated almost every time I meet with them, but it’s an incredible motivator—all I ever want to do is help achieve our shared mission.

Takahashi: Ultimately, technology is no more than a tool—but it’s easy to get turned around and make it a goal in itself. Mr. Iida is the kind of person who will always return to the question of how we can make nursing care facilities easier places to work, how we can make nursing care better, and what we need to reach our ideals in the field. His attitude in turn helps us remember what our true purpose is for doing this work. The project also reminded me that bringing joy to frontline staff is what really makes this job worthwhile. This was the first time we had put a data system in a facility, and one of the user’s rooms had the toilet icon on all the time. Since it was our first time doing this, we assumed it was a system error, but when we checked it out we found that the person fallen in the bathroom. It proved that the Care Data Connect could help caregivers with unplanned things—and the facility staff thanked us for our support.

Iida: That was a bit of a shock. It was the first day after installing the system, so we thought we had overlooked something in the settings. When I heard that someone had actually fallen and that there wasn’t anything wrong with the accuracy of the system, I breathed a sigh of relief. Looking back, I realize how important it is to accumulate those times of real-world experiences.

Where are the product and project now, and what are your hopes for them in the future?

Iida: There are now about three hundred companies nationwide that have installed Care Data Connect series products. We are also in the process of doing on-site testing of Care Data Connect for FCL in Lab rooms and at Sompo Care La Ville Kawasaki. Our first goal is to make sure we overcome any issues we encounter in the Lab, and then have people in the facility use the product. Sompo Care isn’t the only workplace encountering these kinds of problems, so we’re hoping to create products that are a good fit for addressing them and then popularize them throughout Japan. We want to go deeply into product quality until we know we have a truly great product—one that people will never feel that they wasted money installing. We are also looking to develop a series of products that can be used in home care settings in the future. People have just started the process of using sensors to ease workloads at nursing care sites, and various manufacturers are developing different products. By making monitoring easier with a user-friendly system, I believe we’re getting one step closer to achieving our mission of creating nursing care sites that attract and keep workers.

Takahashi: As Mr. Iida mentioned, we’re currently in the process of testing and evaluating at facilities so we can make improvements based on their needs. We’re hoping to develop the system into one that will be useful for as many nursing care businesses as possible. The product is one that’s going to keep evolving as new devices and sensors come out, so there’s no finish line. I’m convinced that we can develop a product that will change the future of nursing care.