Revisions to prices for drugs reimbursed under Japan’s National Health Insurance (NHI) system that came into effect on April 1 are more drastic than those in recent years, causing concern and uncertainty in the industry. A number of companies will lose out due to large cuts in the prices of some of their leading pharmaceutical...

The Russian invasion of Ukraine will likely go down in history as the first genuinely hybrid cyber-kinetic conflict. Cyber-attacks carried out by Russia as part of its military operations, along with the risks faced by organisations and companies allied to the resulting sanctions, have shone a light on global cybersecurity risks.  On January 14, more...

At the tail end of last year, METI and MILT announced that Mitsubishi-led consortiums had won the first round of auctions for Japan’s fixed-bottom offshore wind projects. Mitsubishi`s bids of approximately 12 to 16.5 JPY per kWh across the three projects were way below the competing bids with differentials of a kind rarely seen in...

A robot designed by researchers at John Hopkins University recently performed complex soft tissue surgery on a pig without being guided by a doctor. This brings closer the day when AI-controlled androids perform operations on humans. In the meantime, robot-assisted surgery is already here and primed for exponential expansion. Robotic arms allow surgeons to carry...

Between the pandemic, supply chain disruptions, extreme weather events, inflation and geopolitical tensions, the coming year looks set to be an unpredictable one. Among the things that can be confidently predicted are that there will be more code written, more software developers and engineers needed and that the programming languages they use will continue to...

The concrete achievements of the recent COP26 climate summit in Glasgow were few and limited in scope, but the shift to renewable energy looks unstoppable. And wind power will be a crucial part of the new decarbonised energy systems.    While hydropower remains the biggest source of renewable energy globally by a significant margin, wind is...

Penetration of digital technology is varying significantly by sector. Along with energy, insurance and the public sector, the global healthcare industry remains something of a laggard in the digitalisation stakes. Japan is far from a digital transformation (DX) pioneer, and healthcare is certainly no exception. However, the nation’s well-documented demographic issues are piling fiscal pressure...

For many decades a curious mix of high-tech and archaic habits, Japan is now pushing ahead with ambitious plans to digitise its economy and society. The pandemic laid bare some of the issues that have left Japan lagging other advanced economies in the digital transformation (DX) stakes. These included the reliance on faxes to report...

Japan has seen a change of heart over the last year or so in its approach to decarbonization. The country has moved from paying lip-service to energy transition goals while emphasizing energy security – resulting in limited progress to date – to fully committing to a rapid acceleration towards carbon neutrality, even if that is...

Robots and AI are coming to take our jobs has been a commonly heard refrain in recent years, but it now seems clear that is not going to happen for a good while yet. In fact, as the global economy emerges from the shock of the pandemic, there are severe labour shortages being reported across multiple...