Japan Post CEO Taizo Nishimuro was on stage with Apple CEO Tim Cook and IBM CEO Ginni Rometty at a special event aimed at the enterprise today in New York. The event was designed to highlight some of the fruits of the IBM/Apple enterprise partnership, through which IBM is developing software and support for large businesses, as well as helping to provision Apple hardware to corporate clients. Japan Post is leveraging that partnership to try to tackle some of the challenges associated with Japan’s aging population.
Nishimuro opened the event talking about how Japan Post is 100 percent owned by the Japanese government, and about how the company is looking to go pubic by the end of this year. It also intends to morph into becoming a more “integrated lifestyle support group,” meaning the Japanese postal agency is looking to expand its role in the company’s healthcare (it has provided services in some capacity or another since 1871, according to Nishimuro), and will do so with the help of IBM and Apple.
Japan’s aging population provides ample motivation for this kind of move, with a forecasted increase in person aged 65 or order from 20 percent in 2006 to 38 percent in 2055. Japan Post is using two major approaches to extend its range of senior support services, and iPad is a key ingredient to the first of those.
The company will be designing iPad-based experiences that are “very easy to use for seniors,” something Nishimuro told the audience today that the iPad is “famous for,” and they’ll be using IBM’s help to develop app analytics and cloud services around these apps. The apps are designed to help connect Japan’s millions of seniors with both the healthcare services community and with their families, with a target of serving 4 to 5 million families by 2020. The second part of Japan Post’s plan is to integrated said services with its existing offerings.
The issue of an aging generation is “most acute in japan we need real solutions,” Nishimuro said. It was a statement echoed by Rometty, too, in follow-up comments where she pointed out that an older population will also be something the U.S., and the world needs to address. 21 percent of the world’s population will fall into the “senior” category by 2050, Rometty said, with 64 countries seeing 30 percent of their population hit that mark by the same time.
Rometty outlined the goals of IBM’s work with Japan Post to address this need as three-fold. First, they’ll be working on “quality of life apps,” both by building some themselves and by integrating others, all of which will be aimed at accessibility first. The key targets will also be iOS, since it’s a mobile-first strategy in keeping with our changed computing habits. Second, they’re working on developing additional accessibility features not yet available, and third they’re helping Japan Post with the service layer required to deliver this.
Tim Cook called the initiative “groundbreaking,” saying that is “not only important for Japan, but [also] has global implications. Together, the three of us and all the teams that work so diligently behind us will dramatically improve the lives of millions of people.”He added that the “courage and the boldness and the ambition that Taizo-san and Japan Post are showing by being first in this is incredibly commendable.”
For Cook, this Japan Post initiative shows the “enormous potential” of the Apple/IBM partnership, and he also delved into a discussion of Apple broader goals with respect to user health. He brought up the examples of HealthKit and ResearchKit, and added that this program with Japan Post to help seniors is perfectly in line with its goals with those existing initiatives.
The Apple CEO talked about how iPad features “help people that are marginalized in some way, and empower them to do the things everyone else can do.” He cited a UC Irvine study which details how remote monitoring and connection with loved ones via iPad help instill a sense of confidence and independence in seniors. He added that he believes what they’re doing in Japan is also scalable around the world.
A demo of the Japan Post offering showed how the iPad could extend the current practice of Japan Post employees checking in on senior customers. In the demo, an employee sits down with an elderly client and helps her set up the iPad’s features, as well as book a doctor’s appointment and arrange for both a prescription and a package pickup. There’s also a questions button that looks to work somewhat like Amazon’s Mayday service for Kindle tablets. Service providers are included, each of which is pre-screened and can provide things like plumbing.
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