Japan: Where medical miracles are waiting to get out of the lab
Japan has one of the world’s oldest populations. So why aren’t more medical innovations seeing the light of day?
FORTUNE — The world’s first sterilizable, flexible organic transistor; mobile apps that can measure your pulse just by imaging your face; X-ray machines that capture not just bone but cancer tissue, too. These are just a few of the technologies being developed in Japan now, where an industry has grown around the world-beating longevity of the country’s people. So why don’t we see ”Made in Japan” stamped more often on medical instruments or other products in the medical field?
The answer, according to some pundits, is the so-called Death Valley Syndrome. In other words, Japanese innovation, full of vitality and promise at the R&D level, rarely makes it across the perilous divide between research and commercialization. Japan is “good at technology but poor in business” as one official who declined to be named puts it. “Its high levels of basic research and superior technology are hampered by too-strict regulations, vertically integrated administration. And the gap between researchers and manufacturers is, in many cases, preventing brilliant R&D results from being put into practical use — the ‘Death Valley’ problem.”