Health

The Fujifilm Group has been offering support to improve medical technologies and provide training in emerging countries to help solve the medical issues they face through spreading our products and Japanese-style medical services. To propel this international outbound expansion of Japanese-style medical services, we have been proactively utilizing government-led public-and-private collaboration projects since 2013. To date, we have been involved in the Business Establishment Support Initiative for Medical Technologies and Services led by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, and the International Promotion Initiative for Medical Technology etc. under the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, and other projects to help disseminate Japanese-style medical services in a number of countries.

Improving Breast Cancer Screening Procedures in Russia

Breast cancer is the most common cancer among Russian women, and also claims the highest number of victims among the different types of cancer. It is important to identify breast cancer at the early stage through screening and start treatment immediately in order to reduce the death rate from this form of cancer. However, the number of Russian women coming to breast cancer screening remains low. To address this situation, we undertook a project to improve and spread a breast cancer screening program in Russia in cooperation with the Women Health Center (WHC) in Moscow, a clinic specializing in cancer diagnosis and treatment for women.

The initial stages of the project were as follows: (1) Installing AMULET Innovality, our latest digital mammography system in WHC and promoting the WHC as a reference clinic for other clinics to share and integrate medical information; (2) Promoting communications between Russian and Japanese doctors and radiologists; and (3) Verifying the validity of Japanese-style cancer screening procedures in Russia. As a result of the project, it was confirmed that replacing conventional analog mammography with digital mammography improved diagnosis accuracy and procedural efficiency. Also, the exchange of Russian and Japanese staff members highlighted the importance of improving the diagnostic and exposure technics of doctors and radiologists, and the benefits of Japan's team-based medical care approach. This indicated the direction for the project to take in the future.

Fujifilm also signed an agreement with R-Pharm JSC, a major Russian pharmaceutical company in December 2016, to form a comprehensive healthcare business partnership. We plan to expand our healthcare business in Russia through broad-based collaborations with our new partner in order to contribute to solving medical issues in the country.