Program #1

Improve well-being of ALS patients and their families

ALS is a neurodegenerative disease that results in loss of the ability to eat, speak, move, and finally breathe, leading to early death from respiratory failure. It takes 1-2 years for ALS patients to get diagnosis because most of the patients do not initially reach out to the specialists resulting in delay in the start of treatment. ALS is also intractable, making it difficult for patients to maintain their motivation for the continuation of the treatment. During TANAMIN Digital Health Challenge, the goal is to raise awareness in the community to reach out the right doctor at earliest possible signs of ALS. Also, we aim to improve the well-being of ALS patients, their families and loved ones using digital technologies. We are looking for startups with the following digital tools:

• Digital technologies to increase awareness and encourage patients to get early diagnostics
• Development of medication support applications e.g., medication guidance, medication management to improve adherence, nutritional management, daily activity monitoring
• Digital technologies that provide a supportive environment for interaction among ALS patients themselves and family members of ALS patients
• Digital technologies to enable patients with impaired conversational function to communicate more effectively

Selected startups will be working with the MTPC team, a pharmaceutical company focused on providing options for ALS patients in Japan and in the United States, among many other diseases. Thus, startups will have great opportunity to create difference in the life of ALS patients and in their families.

Eligibility criteria: Startups with working prototypes ready to be used for paid proof of concept study. The initial PoC will target the Japanese market, with the possibility of expanding to the global market after a successful PoC.

Program #2

Digitalize Decentralized Clinical Trial (DCT)

Recently decentralized clinical trials (DCT) are getting a lot of attention. Decentralization often presents challenge of remote patient monitoring or obtaining biological samples, and currently, nurse’s home visits are arranged to overcome these challenges. However, nurse’s home visit also has the other challenges such as travel burden of research staff, restrictions of local law etc.. During TANAMIN Digital Health Challenge, we are looking for technologies required for general clinical trials irrespective of the indication or therapeutic product that can replace or minimize nurse’s visits. More specifically;

• Medical devices or technologies that would allow patients to collect biological samples on their own without outpatient visits or intervention of medical professional.
• Digital health devices or technologies that allows remote patient monitoring but obtain data with similar quality required for clinical trials.

Eligibility criteria: Startups with technologies already approved or expected to be approved within a few years by relevant regulatory authorities. Startups with cutting edge technologies under development can apply but must have devices at design freeze stage and have human data sets available using those tools.

Program #3

Increase preventative vaccination in Japan

Vaccines play very important role in preventive care. In Japan, the coverage of routine childhood vaccines is high, but the coverage of voluntary vaccination in child and adults is extremely low despite the availability of local government subsidies for certain vaccines. In TANAMIN Digital Health Challenge, we would like to leverage digital technology of promising startups to improve voluntary vaccination coverage. We are looking for startups with the following tools:

• Adapting proven digital technology tools that engage, retain, and change behavior towards preventive care especially vaccination.
• Can propose digital solution to increase the coverage of voluntary vaccination. For example,
  
  • startups that can simplify vaccination reservation system
  • startups having platform with a Japanese customer contact data base of consumer over 50s.(e.g. on-line medical service,. Medical platform with nursing care and nursing service)
• Startups that can capture data related to in-hospital prescriptions of voluntary and routine vaccines.(e.g. Digital vaccine pre-medication form)
• Digital technology tools that improve the convenience of stakeholders related to vaccination

Eligibility criteria:
Startups with existing tools developed for other applications but can be used for above purposes. Startups with tools for vaccines ready to do a feasibility study. There is a possibility of involvement of local Japanese governments during or after successful feasibility study so startups who can understand and speak Japanese would be preferred.

The initial PoC will be targeted to the Japanese market for herpes vaccine, but scope can be expanded to other vaccine and geographies