Professor Kazuhiro Hara’s Idea Was As Simple To Express As It Was Difficult To Realize: Improving The Quality’ Of Perinatal Care In Japan While Reducing
management
Description
Professor Kazuhiro Hara’s idea was as simple to express as it was difficult to realize: improving the quality’ of perinatal care in Japan while reducing the costs. As a gynecologist, he knew that sharing patient information
with professionals in other facilities would significantly reduce child and
maternal mortality. But he also knew that getting medical professionals to
cooperate was nearly impossible. Japanese society was strongly risk averse
when it came to health care innovation. Medical professionals were not keen
on experiments; failure could terminate one’s career and even result in litigation. Hara understood this well, but the wariness of his colleagues did not
deter him from pursuing his plan. In the 1990s he built HelioBaby, his own
online platform, for perinatal care, and started to enlist participants. Ten years
later, HelioBaby was rolled out across the country. Not only did Hara’s innovation change perinatal practice, it also changed the perception of risks, costs,
and benefits. Now, innovation in Japanese health care is no longer seen as
costly, risky, and undesirable—instead, the status quo is.
Around the same time Dr. Hara conceived of HelioBaby, a German member of parliament by the name of Hermann Scheer concluded that his country could no longer afford to postpone the switch to solar energy. But a
transition to solar energy would require a profound reshuffle in the entire
energy market; the fossil energy sector had been dominant for decades and
had considerable influence on key decisionmakers, such as the chancellor and
the minister of finances. In Scheer's words, asking fossil energy companies to
turn their businesses around was like “asldng the mafia to help fight organized
crime.” Nevertheless, he took his chances and started an ambitious energy
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