Vivatechnology2021 – SINEORA Live
VIVATECH, the festival of innovation, took place in Paris, France, for four days from 16 June, as usual at the Porte de Versailles, but also as a “hybrid of exhibition” so there were many online contents.
SINEORA, VIVATECH’s official ambassador in Japan, has set three main themes of the event. SINEORA’s representative in Paris, Kimiko Imai, covered the booths at the real venue. At the webinars, the experts in the field of each theme were invited to participate in the as commentators, to deepen the discussions with the Japanese audience.
In the first part of the series, we looked at the latest developments in the healthcare sector. For this session, we welcomed Mr. Nakanishi, CEO of TripleW, who, together with SINEORA CEO Imai, talked about the current state of healthcare start-ups in Europe and the differences between Europe, especially France, and Japan.
President Macron was also present on the first day of VIVATECH this year to participate in the round table. He had a bilingual discussion with French and other European start-ups in English and French. One of the priority areas that France needs to invest in is education and healthcare. In France, for example, there are unicorns such as Doctolib, which started as a medical appointment system. Innovation in healthcare, which is one of the national strategies, is an area that is attracting a lot of attention.
The startups at the show ranged from software to optimize medical facilities (ubudu) to medical devices based on robotics (Japet.). And Mr Nakanishi, the head of TripleW in Japan, pointed out that French healthcare seems to be very much conscious about “changing the way we work”. Indeed, after the sanitary crisis, optimising hospitals and creating a good working environment for healthcare professionals is an important issue for France. In a post-Corona society, there are three key areas: medical devices, telemedicine and tailor-made medicine.
To mark the occasion, we interviewed Mr. Marc Chevalier, President of the French Institute “Imagine”, which supports start-ups arising from research in the field of biotechnology. Mr. Chevalier said that the Corona disaster has made us realise that biotech entrepreneurs must now offer solutions for the world, not just for their own patients. The biotech sector has great potential for growth and is well funded. The problem, however, is how to create start-ups with a solid business model. France, on the other hand, has been through a lot of trial and error phase and, with the support of the government, has recently reached a new phase.
Of course, it would be difficult to bring French innovation directly to Japan, given the differences in the social security system. But it is also difficult for Japan to do everything on its own from scratch. With this in mind, we need to develop our strengths and complement our weaknesses with innovation from overseas. It will be more important to draw up such a scheme in the future. We need to promote international collaboration and scale up. By doing so, we will be able to provide better services to our patients. Ideally, SINEORA wants to create such a cycle. The key word is international co-creation. In order to develop new drugs and medical devices, there is an unavoidable test phase. In order to ensure that this phase does not become a barrier to innovation, we will increasingly need to be aware of international collaboration from the moment of business creation.
Written by Mai Ono
