The Seattle Pacific Health Summit

June 30 (Friday) 2006

On June 20, the three-day Pacific Health Summit commenced in Seattle, Washington. With the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as its core, the summit included experts from foundations and companies including the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, Microsoft, Intel, Coca-Cola, Fujitsu, etc.. The summit is a truly international one that seeks to develop technology, systems, and mechanisms for the early detection and treatment of cancer-a disease that is growing increasingly grave around the world.

Since the beginning stages of planning early last year I had been consulted regarding the Pacific Health Summit, and in June of 2005 I had the privilege of participating in the first summit. From the very start I truly felt the importance and urgency of this effort to tackle one of the greatest challenges facing the future of humankind. With this sense of significance, I fervently hoped that Fujitsu could also participate in this effort, and after various consultations with Chairman and Representative Director Akikusa, Fujitsu joined the fight alongside other global IT companies such as Microsoft, IBM, Intel and others.

But why are global IT companies getting involved with healthcare issues?
It is said that global healthcare has entered the “post-genome” stage. Initiated during the Clinton years by the company Cellular Genomics, the effort to decode the human genome has finally reached completion. There are 3.2 billion genetic base pairs present in a single human. After 10 years of research and almost 100 billion yen, these pairs have finally been decoded, and the aim of research is now focused on using this information effectively. Developing the information technology to handle this next step, however, is no easy task. It is predicted that in only a few more years, a person will be able to decode their individual genome for the cost of around $1,000. If this becomes a reality, it would mean that the decoding of the entire nation would be possible. By decoding the human genome in this way, it is thought that up to 60% of the illnesses a person might contract during their lifetime could be detected. Building off of the future direction healthcare in the post-genome world, it is easy to understand the significance of the call that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's is making to the international community.

The Tokyo Conference was held in April of this year (as introduced in my May 8 post) ahead of the second annual summit in Seattle. This was one of the many conferences held by various groups in locations around the world in between of the principle summits. With Fujitsu as its core, the Tokyo conference was host to serious discussion centered on HIT (Healthcare Information Technology). Additionally, Nobel Prize winner Lee Hartwell, Chairman and Representative Director of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, has been pursuing research in the U.S. on cancer biomarkers as part of a sub-group of the Center. There are also a variety of other sub-themes that are currently being researched.

Building off of the accumulated information from these kinds of studies, the Seattle summit hosted discussions and debates in the form of five plenary sessions supplemented by breakout sessions and group sessions.

On June 21, the first day of the main summit, the themes of “How do we pay for a healthier tomorrow?” and “How do we prepare for (and survive) the next killer pandemic?” were discussed. The breakout session that followed tackled various themes such as how to proceed with the creation of an international composite index for early detection (i.e. Early Health Index), how to respond to the problem of obesity, and others. Other themes addressed in the breakout sessions included the continuing ravages of infectious diseases in developing nations, where many thousands die every year of illnesses such as influenza. The issue of the countless victims of HIV also needs no introduction. Supplying vaccines for illnesses such as these is a grave issue. Related to this, FRI's own Senior Managing Director, Mr. Nezu, chaired the “Pandemic Preparedness and Health Information Technology and Policy Workgroup Breakout Session”.

The theme of the second day's main summit on June 22 was “Vaccines: How to Bridge Science and Policy?” The day's breakout sessions were carried out under the themes of “Lost in Translation”, “Age Tsunami”, “East Meets West” and others, and hosted discussions on problems such as how to make practical use of advances in medical science and how to respond to the aging of society. I expressed concerns regarding these two themes as discussion leader of the session “East Meets West”.

The main focus of last year's first annual summit was first and foremost getting to know each other, perhaps because it was the first time that many of the individuals involved had met. Leading up to the second annual summit this year, however, separate meetings were conducted all over the world, and the participants recognized each other's kindred goals. In this way, I feel that the summit this year promoted deeper mutual understanding and even more frank and penetrating discussions.

The Pacific Health Summit is to continue until 2008, and there is a definite sense of anticipation that it will make steady progress with each year. With participants numbering around 200, it is a gathering of an appropriate number of experts who are devoted to the summit's themes, and one can truly feel the potential for substantive and constructive dialogue. From FRI's perspective, it is an opportunity to create an informal network of personal contacts of those connected to Japan (including people from other countries), and it is a way to improve FRI's achievements. In the future, I hope to announce the progress of our informal discussions on FRI's website when I have the chance.