公益財団法人

セコム科学技術振興財団

研究成果報告書

研究課題名

地域あんしんシステムを実現するためのソーシャルビジネスの創成
Social System Design Project:
Launching of Social Businesses to Reassure the Community
研究期間
平成 20 年 4 月 ～ 平成 22 年 9 月

報告年月
平成 22 年 12 月 21 日
研究代表者

芝浦工業大学 システム理工学部学部長 環境システム学科教授
三浦 昌生
Shibaura Institute of Technology
Dean, College of Systems Engineering and Science
Professor, Department of Environment Systems
Masao MiuraAbstract
The greatest challenge facing Japan today is the country’s aging population — an extremely
serious problem that can only be solved if Japan takes a leading role in the search for a solution. In
our effort to squarely address this challenge, our research group organized the “Social System Design
Project: Launching of Social Businesses to Reassure the Community”. For more than four years, wehave been fulfilling our mission with the help of research grants from Secom Science andTechnology Foundation.
The purpose of the present research is to design a social system that will support all aspects ofthe daily life of the elderly, including health, medical care and nursing care. We have beenworking towards the following three goals:
First, R&D of a vision of community reassurance that encompasses support for health, medicalcare, nursing care, elderly care and other aspects of daily life, as well as residentialenvironments.
Second, as a basis for launching a community reassurance system, we are working to develop
an information-system network together with a residential environment support system, and tooperate them in an actual community environment to demonstrate their usefulness.
Third, to create community businesses (social business) that will support and further expand
the above prototype systems.
The Suwa Nagayama area in Tama New Town was selected for implementation of the project.
There, a community research base was established, and the project’s researchers have been
facilitating activities, each with specific research and development targets. Project members
include people who have been practicing in Tama New Town as architects, doctors andcommunity activists; those members contribute to a larger share of project activities.
Furthermore, significant progress has been made in establishing tangible relationships withcommunity residents and local governments.
Conducting the aforementioned activities has enabled clarification of the purpose and effects ofthe system to be created. The role of and the relationship between the elderly/residents and thelocal organizations/governments supporting various services have also been analyzed. The
specifics of comprehensive services to be provided, as well as appropriate relationships in termsof information sharing, business co-operation, and responsibility sharing within the project havealso been discussed. What resulted from those discussions was the design for a “CommunityReassurance System Model”, which we decided to implement.
It was decided that this “Community Reassurance System Model” be applied to Tama NewTown. We decided, as the first step, to develop and promote the “Daily Life Consulting System”
and “Reassurance Communication Network” as the Model’s tangible infrastructure bases. After
this, a support system for residential environments (a support system for residence selectionand relocation) will be developed, to make the Model a comprehensive system.

These systems being developed by inter-disciplinary researchers, community activists (medicalpersonnel, nursing-care personnel, institution personnel, daily-life-support organizations, etc.)
and development engineers are now at the stage of final demonstration testing. With ordinary
information systems development, the party deciding on the specifications (the ordering party)
and the party developing the system according to the specifications are divided, making goal
sharing difficult, and resulting in poor achievement. Our community reassurance system isbeing developed through close contact among community activists who constantly deal with theelderly, editors of information contents, and information technology developers.
The specifics of the above two systems are as follows:# Daily-life Consultation System
1. A website information and communication technology (ICT) system for relieving worries andsolving problems encountered by elderly people.
2. The users of the system are assumed to be elderly people, their families, and relevant personnel,
as well as navigators/instructors of organizational bases in the city.
3. The system is dynamic and ambitious, in that both the elderly person and the people associatedwith him or her, and the people providing support are expected to grow through participating inthe system.
4. During FY2011, demonstration tests will be conducted at “Fukushitei” and “Nagayama House”,
which are known as places where elderly people gather.
5. Information about the demonstration tests will be disseminated to relevant people both inside andoutside of Tama New Town.
6. The pilot system is expected to function as a standard model system applicable in various places inJapan.
# Reassurance Communication Network
1. A system to be used by medical, nursery and institutional staff supporting the elderly to convey
information concerning elderly persons to nonresident family and related people is currently
undergoing demonstration tests.
2. It is hoped that quick entering of information on the condition of an elderly person as a cell phone
voice message will contribute to the building of mutual trust.
3. A service that enables the staff of a nursing home facility to convey the situation of a resident tononresident family members and other relevant people is currently undergoing a demonstration
test.
4. A system for doctors, nurses, care managers, care workers, etc. to share information concerning
the elderly person is also undergoing a demonstration test.
5. In line with the current ICT use environment, these systems make use of cell-phone voicemessages. Implementation signals of voice input have already been automatically delivered ase-mail messages. The system will be made multi-terminal/multi-media in the future, in order toenable the use of cell phones, PCs, etc., and voice and e-mail messages as appropriate.
6. The pilot system currently undergoing demonstration testing will be a standard model system.
7. In the initial stage of the project, a monitoring system was developed to automatically send doctors’
voice messages to elderly patients, who send their reply concerning their health condition bypressing buttons. This monitoring system has already been put into practical use.
The above-mentioned two systems will be integrated in the next stage, to form the Reassurance
System. Connections will be made within and among communities to create a network. Furthermore,
we plan to move forward with the development of a support system for residence selection andrelocation in accordance with people’s life-stage. At the same time, the business vision/program isbeing formulated to create community businesses (social businesses) which will function as thebackbone of business entities in the “Community Reassurance System Model”.