Osaka, Osaka City
Emergency Room Automated Triage System (ERATS) We aim to reduce mortality rates by achieving rapid image diagnosis. Our system, “ERATS”, analyzes CT images and identifies life-threatening lesions within 10 seconds, enabling physicians to make faster and more accurate diagnoses. We provide AI software that highlights life-threatening lesions. By using this application, physicians can focus only on important images, realizing prevention of oversights and faster diagnosis in emergencies. I founded fcuro to prevent preventable death by using AI technology. Our project has been endorsed by the Japanese Association for Acute Medicine (JAAM), and we have been expanding our research primarily in Japan. We are now seeking hospitals to collaborate with us in assessing the international applicability of our technology. Our AI system is currently being developed in collaboration with 21 hospitals internationally. We are looking for hospitals to validate its effectiveness.
As the population ages and the number of patients increases rapidly, Japan is facing a serious shortage of doctors. Emergency care facilities, with the number of emergency transports increasing dramatically, are already over capacity, and there are patients whose lives are difficult to save when staff is thin outside of normal operating hours. A prime example of this is patients with severe trauma. The leading cause of death in severe trauma patients is blood loss. Therefore, whether or not a patient can be saved depends entirely on whether the bleeding point can be quickly identified and the bleeding can be stopped. In emergency care facilities, it is not possible to determine where the bleeding is coming from just by examining the surface of the body, so a device called a CT scan is used to create detailed images of the inside of the body from head to toe, and based on this, the source of the bleeding is identified. While this CT scan is very useful, it has two major problems. It takes time and can lead to overlooking something. Our goal in this research is to develop an AI system that can quickly find bleeding points from CT images, thereby enabling optimal trauma rescue in any situation, regardless of the time of day or size of the hospital, and realizing a world without preventable trauma deaths (trauma deaths that account for up to 20% of all trauma deaths and are estimated to be saveable with appropriate treatment).
| Representative |
Naoki OkadaAfter graduating from Keio University School of Medicine, he worked as an emergency physician at Osaka Acute Care General Medical Center and Advanced Emergency Medical Center, and is currently on secondment to the Department of Surgery. He is a member of the Special Committee for Activating AI Research in the Japanese Society for Acute Medicine. After becoming a nationally certified AI researcher and developer in the 2019 MITOU AI Frontier project, he founded fcuro to implement research and development technologies in the field of emergency care. Since then, he has served as research director for NEDO projects, IPA MITOU Advanced projects, Cabinet Secretariat projects, and AMED Medical and Engineering Collaboration Innovation Promotion Project, steadily implementing his research in society step by step, and continues to work in the field of emergency care. |
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| Main Achievements | July 2024: Selected for the ICT Startup League January 2023: Selected for the Kansai-based global startup creation project "Kansai Startups" September 2022: Selected for the JETRO Acceleration Program "Enterprise Business (B2B) Course" June 2022: Selected for the Cabinet Secretariat's "Research and Development Project for Demonstration and Introduction of Key Technologies for the Realization of the With-COVID Era" April 2022: Selected for the AMED Medical and Engineering Collaboration Innovation Promotion Project (Development and Commercialization Project) Venture Development May 2021: Selected for the Cabinet Secretariat's "Research and Development Project for Demonstration and Introduction of Key Technologies for the Realization of the Post-COVID Era" December 2020: Selected for the Cabinet Secretariat's "COVID-19 AI and Simulation Project" October 2020: Selected for the NEDO Research and Development Startup Support Project NEP July 2020 Selected for the IPA MITOU Advanced Program March 2019: Selected for the 1st MITOU AI Frontier Program |
| Childhood Dream | My goal is to run an izakaya in an area where delicious fish and meat are caught, serving what I think is delicious, and sending people who come in in a bad mood home in a good mood. |
| Influential People, Things, and Events | Person: Shusuke Inoue Thing: Cooking utensils Event: Emergency care |
| Motivation, Goals, and Ideal World | As an emergency physician, I have experienced cases where patients were still breathing when they were brought to the hospital, but the initial diagnosis was delayed or overlooked, making it impossible to save their lives. I thought that there was a limit to what human power alone could do. I started a company to implement all the technologies that emergency physicians need in the field to save lives and to realize a world without preventable deaths. First, I personally developed an AI-based damaged organ evaluation device. Through this achievement, I was certified as a nationally certified AI engineer in the first MITOU AI Frontier Program, but there were still issues with the accuracy and the implementation method of the application for the field. Based on the belief that technologies that can be used in the field should be implemented in society, CTO Inoue and I founded fcuro Inc., and we aim to build an organization that can deliver technology to emergency scenes as quickly as possible. |
| Company Name | fcuro inc. |
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| Representative Name | Naoki Okada |
| Address | Osaka City, Osaka Prefecture |
| Official Site and Social Media |
Official Website @fcuro_inc | X (Twitter) |
| Founding Date | 2020-06-16T15:00:00.000Z |
| Awards |
2023/11 Received the HeCNOS AWARD and selected as a candidate company for the World Expo 2023/08 Nature magazine published an article on COVID-19 image diagnosis AI work within the Cabinet Secretariat project 2023/03 Received the Intellectual Property Utilization Encouragement Award in the Intellectual Property Strategy category at the 9th Intellectual Property Utilization Awards 2023/03 Received the Grand Prize in the MedTech Angels 2022 medical device acceleration program 2023/01 Selected for the Kansai-based global startup creation project "Kanpo" 2022/12 Selected as a J-TECH STARTUP 2022 certified company 2022/09 Research project on trauma whole-body CT diagnosis AI certified as recommended AI research by the Japanese Society of Acute Medicine 2022/09 Received the JETRO acceleration program "Enterprise Business (B2B) Adopted for the "BRAVE 2021 DEMO DAY" course 2022/04 Adopted for the AMED Medical Engineering Collaboration Innovation Promotion Project (Development and Commercialization Project) Venture Development Program 2022/02 First place in the 2nd Unicorn Breakthrough Business Contest 2021/05 Won the Grand Prize at the "BRAVE 2021 DEMO DAY" pitch event for next-generation deep tech entrepreneurs 2021/01 COVID-19 image diagnosis AI research project recognized as recommended AI research by the Japanese Society of Acute Medicine 2020/10 Adopted for the NEDO R&D Startup Support Program NEP 2020/07 Adopted for the IPA MITOU Advanced Program 2019/03 Adopted for the 1st MITOU AI Frontier Program |