#15 Experiencing the "valley of death" when founding two companies, the secret to overcoming it was a positive attitude

After completing the Graduate School of Engineering at Kyoto University, I moved to Kagawa Prefecture and worked for several companies. I worked for a company in the factory automation (FA) business, inspecting home appliances, and for an IT company in technical sales.

The turning point for me came when I was at an IT company and participated in the "Shikoku 4 Prefectures Electronic Medical Record Network Collaboration Project," an industry-academia-government project. I was involved in the electronic medical record for obstetrics and gynecology, but the project itself ended after two years. My desire to save pregnant women grew stronger, and with the knowledge I gained from the project and by purchasing a prototype electronic medical record from a participating company, I launched a company in 2002 that handles electronic medical records specialized for obstetrics and gynecology.

However, the computerization of medical records was not progressing very well, and there was a period of two years during which we could not sell. Mr. Ninomiya, who was with another company at the time, advised me, "If you don't visit your customers properly, you won't sell," and I was astonished. At the time, I thought that if I made good products, they would sell on their own. Unlike when I was working for a company, I had to search for customers by myself, but I visited nearly 200 hospitals and clinics.

In 2002, Professor Kazuhiro Hara and his team at Kagawa University started a project to create a new delivery monitoring device, and I joined them. As we worked to develop a mobile fetal heart rate monitor, I began to think that eventually telemedicine would be necessary to save pregnant women. At that time, I decided to take the prototype fetal heart rate monitor to Thailand. In Chiang Mai, Thailand, there was a shortage of obstetricians and gynecologists, and primary hospitals, which serve as family doctors, had no obstetricians. Therefore, it was too late to transport the patient, or it was impossible to determine when the patient should be transported in the first place.

When we used the prototype to measure fetal data, we found nearly 50 pregnant women who needed to be transported to a medical facility, 10 of whom required surgery, etc., but we were able to save all of them. We were asked for more equipment, but at the time we only had a few prototypes. I decided to commercialize the product and establish a system to sell it, so I established Melody International with Mr. Ninomiya.

As we witnessed in Thailand, mothers and babies are dying all over the world because they missed the right time to receive treatment. With the number of obstetricians and gynecologists decreasing in Japan and the shortage of doctors in developing countries, we thought that a simple-to-use fetal monitor could save lives.

After the first prototype was developed, there was a period of inactivity before the product began to sell. When it came time to sell the product we had developed, we were in a "valley of death" because we could not get investment or financing.

It is not cool to say that the Corona has helped us sell our products, but I believe that the Corona disaster and the advancements in telemedicine have led many people to use our devices.

We are working on an IoT fetal monitor, the "delivery monitoring device iCTG". The iCTG is a cordless device that sends measurement data via Bluetooth from the device to a tablet or smartphone. The iCTG sends measurement data to a tablet or smartphone via Bluetooth for cordless operation. The acquired data is uploaded to a cloud server and can be viewed by obstetricians and gynecologists at the hospital, at home, or on the road from anywhere. Furthermore, the system is rechargeable so that it can be used in environments where electricity is not stably supplied, such as remote islands, remote areas, and developing countries.

Where previously the pregnant woman, the device, and the doctor had to be in the same place for it to be of any use, the iCTG can be carried anywhere and diagnosed from anywhere. It is just smaller and more connected to the Internet, but it allows us to do more and more.

Although the device looks different, we also focused on making it acceptable to those who have used delivery monitoring devices in the past, so it can be worn in the same way as conventional ones. When you take the device with you and show it to your midwife, she can use it right away just by looking at it, as long as you tell her how to turn it on.

In Japan, many hospitals and clinics used these devices in the same way as conventional delivery monitoring devices, but with the coronary disaster, the use of these devices for telemedicine within hospitals is rapidly increasing. Stationary delivery monitoring equipment provides data on the spot, so if a pregnant woman is in an infected area, the obstetrician has to go there, and it is also time-consuming to disinfect the equipment. The iCTG is used to transmit data measured in the infected area, and obstetricians can view the data from outside the infected area. In addition, iCTG is also used for home medical care, in ambulances during transportation, at midwife outpatient clinics, and in 13 countries including Thailand, Bhutan, and Myanmar.

In developing countries and other places where there is a shortage of doctors, the vast amount of data obtained from iCTG is sent to a single doctor, who may not be able to look through it all. We hope to use the technology to analyze heartbeats to help identify only those cases that really need to be looked over.

It is said that the goddess of fortune has only bangs, and we, too, have had nothing but good results when we have done things that we were sure would work out. We also cherish the words of Dr. Hara of Kagawa University, who said, "Since you are doing something idealistic, you are bound to get good results. I feel it is important to have an image of success.