The City of Kobe has various projects based on a series of Comprehensive Basic Plans, consisting of the New Kobe City Focal Concept (planning a period over the years 1993-2025), which shows the city’s direction in the future. The Fifth Kobe City Basic Plan (planning period: 2011-2025) and Implementation Plans (five years each) show a basic approach to urban development up towards 2025, the target year of the Basic Concept. Various projects are being promoted based on the Comprehensive Basic Plan.
One of these, the ‘Kobe Medical Industry City’, is one crucial measure of the current implementation plan.
What is Kobe Medical Industry Development Project?
The Kobe Biomedical Innovation Cluster is Japan’s first and largest biomedical cluster concentrating on medical-related research institutions and business organisations seeing the creation of new businesses.
The city launched the concept in 1998 as a project to rebuild the economy, severely damaged in the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake of 17 January 1995, with three objectives: 1) to secure employment and revitalise the Kobe economy, 2) to improve the health and welfare of citizens and 3) to contribute to the improvement of medical technology in Asian countries.
Research institutions such as RIKEN and university departments as well as a group of highly specialised hospitals and medical-related companies and organisations have facilities on the man-made Port Island in Kobe City. Numbering some 360 organisations, including Kobe City Medical Centre Central Municipal Hospital, with the cluster leading to numerous innovations in the medical field.
In 2020, the city’s economic and tax revenue will amount to 156.2 billion yen and 6.9 billion yen respectively; as of March 2022, 12,400 people (in 2022) are working in companies and organisations that have set up operations in the city.
The four aims of the Kobe Biomedical Innovation Cluster include the following future visions for the project.
01: Kobe has the highest standard of medical care optimally available.
By further promoting the concentration of hospitals in line with the development of medical care, the city promotes the formation of a medical cluster where everyone can receive the world’s highest standard of medical care. This in turn creates new value from the perspective of both patients and related companies by developing new medical businesses.
02: Kobe contributes internationally through advanced medical care
By strengthening bridging and basic research functions, the core competencies of the Kobe Medical Industry Development City, Kobe will distribute new medical technologies to the world. It will also establish a system to promptly feedback on the world’s most advanced trends, to develop as one of the world’s leading medical industrial cities.
03: Kobe practices new public health using pre-emptive medicine.
Kobe will create a city of fitness and longevity where all citizens are healthy and energetic, by creating a pre-emptive medical treatment that predicts and diagnoses possible future diseases before they occur. This provides the opportunity for therapeutic intervention necessary to prevent or delay the onset and will build a new health promotion system based on citizen participation.
04: Creating dynamism in Kobe through integrating activities of businesses and other organisations.
By integrating the research and development output of the Kobe Medical Industry Development City with local assets unique to Kobe, the city aims to create a new industry and establish a mechanism to promote business independently and self-reliantly within the inter-business community.
Composition of the Kobe Biomedical Innovation Cluster
The Medical Industry City consists of the following three clusters.
01: Medical cluster
This is an area where various hospitals are concentrated. New cures and technologies that doctors consider necessary in the field of medicine need to be developed efficiently and safely in cooperation with researchers and companies. For this reason, hospitals are an essential part of the Kobe Medical Industry City.
02: Bio-cluster.
This area is home to world-class research institutions of the highest standard, such as RIKEN. Several research centres are located around the Medical Centre Railway Station on the Port Island Line, the heart of Kobe Medical Industry City. A wide range of research is conducted here, including basic research into the cycle of life from birth to old age, and research into cells on regenerative medicine (medical treatment to repair and regenerate body functions and tissues lost due to illness or injury).
03: Simulation cluster
The Fugaku supercomputer ranked second in the world, is located in this area. Many academic and other institutions in the field of computational science are located here. The powerful computation, enabling various simulations to be carried out at speeds impossible in the real world, is also used in the development of medicines and the establishment of diagnostic methods for diseases.
Achievements
Surgical support robot born in Kobe
MEDICALOID Corporation was established in the Kobe Medical Industry Development City as a joint venture between Kawasaki Heavy Industries, a leading industrial robotics company, and Sysmex, which owns testing and diagnostic technologies and has a broad network in the medical field. In response to advances in minimally invasive treatments, as well as rising expectations for medical robots, the company began developing a surgical support robot in 2015 and produced the surgical support robot hinotori™ after about five years of development.
The world’s first demonstration of the remote operation of a domestically produced surgical support robot via commercial 5G took place in April 2021. The number of medical departments to which the robot can be applied is also being expanded.
[Hinotori image, taken from the Medical Industry City website: https://www.fbri-kobe.org/kbic/cases/cs001/]
Reference links:
(i) Implementation Plan (2025 Vision) English brochure.
https://www.city.kobe.lg.jp/documents/35913/03_2025vision-eng.pdf
(ii) Medical Industry City website (in English)
https://www.fbri-kobe.org/kbic/english/
The city of Kobe has an area of 550km2 and a population of 1.5 million (seventh largest in Japan), and is located in the Kansai region, neighbouring Osaka (one of the largest cities in Japan) and Kyoto (famous for its historic cityscape). The city is famous for Kobe Beef, internationally renowned as one of Japan’s three major beef products. Nada Gogo has been named the best sake brewery in Japan, with 25% of all sake sold in the country being distilled in the city, and Arima Onsen, a hot spring resort has a long history dating back to around 600AD.
