2016 Deshima Business Awards | The Netherlands Chamber of Commerce in Japan (NCCJ)

Healthcare Companies Dominate NCCJ’s 2016 Deshima Business Awards

The challenges of providing quality and affordable healthcare for an aging population are key issues in Japan. So it is appropriate that the Netherlands Chamber of Commerce in Japan is recognizing two healthcare-related firms this year, with its 2016 Deshima Business Awards.

   “It’s absolutely a great honour,” says Hans Reiber, CEO of Medis medical imaging systems, winners of the prize for business excellence in the small and mid-sized enterprise category.
   Reiber’s products are used by cardiologists to measure the size and contours of a patient’s heart vessels and to tell whether or not parts of a patient’s heart chamber are working properly. Medis systems are already in use at more than 600 hospitals in Japan.
   “In Japan, doctors really want to know what the sizes are of the abnormalities in millimetres, and not only how it looks compared to the other image,” says Reiber. “All the qualification and dedication to that makes it why our products are so widely used in Japan.”

   Philips Electronics took home the 2016 Deshima in the large enterprise category. The blue chip Dutch firm has long been a leader in home electronics. However, in recent years, Philips has focused more on medical innovation.
   “We do have a goal,” says Philips Japan president and CEO Danny Risberg. “We think we’re in the right direction. And this is another proof point.”
   Risberg says Philips is now a health-tech company, focusing on a patient’s life cycle from beginning to the end. In a country with such acute healthcare needs, Risberg believes Japan is the perfect market for his firm to innovate and learn.
  “We want to touch everywhere we can to help,” he says. “And that’s everything from healthy living to diagnostics to therapy, treatment and rehabilitation. Unfortunately, we’re all getting old. So I think Philips is the company that can play across all cycles.”

   This year’s Deshima Awards were handed out at Tokyo’s Peninsula Hotel, as part of a trade mission and dinner sponsored by the Netherlands Ministry of Economic Affairs. Maarten Camps, Vice Minister in the Netherlands’ Ministry of Economic Affairs, headed up the trade mission.
   “The impression that I get from Japan is that you have a major agenda, and some serious topics that you are working on — on energy, food, health and cyber security,” says Camps. “These are issues that we are working on in the Netherlands as well.”
   “I noticed there is a hunger for cooperation and a hunger for the knowledge and technologies that we have, as much as we have a hunger for the knowledge and technologies here in Japan.”
   Netherlands’ Ambassador to Japan Aart Jacobi says it is purely coincidental that both of this year’s Deshima winners come from the medical field. However, with Japan’s rapidly greying population, the demand for quality healthcare solutions will be great in the coming years.
   “In many ways, we may also learn from the Japanese,” adds Jacobi. “Because they are ahead of us in the aging of society and are already working on solutions. They are quite ahead of us in that respect.”

   Other Deshima nominees this year included Booking.com, Brand Loyalty Japan, Buurtzorg Neighborhood Care Asia Ltd., Dutch-Japanese Maritime Desk K.K., Elsevier Japan, FlowerWatch BV, Fugro Japan Co., Ltd., NN Life Insurance Company, Ltd., Otazu, Rabobank Tokyo, Royal Asscher Diamond Company Ltd., Scarabee Aviation Group-Japan, Scelta Mushrooms, Scoth & Soda, UltraSuperNew K.K., Vakpaspoort and Xendo-Vigilex.

   The Deshima Award winners were chosen by a jury panel representing the Japanese and Dutch business community. Shinji Fukukawa, Senior Advisor of the Global Industrial and Social Progress Research Institute (GISPRI) was the jury’s chairman. Other panel members included Hiromitsu Kuramoto, Chairman of Netherlands Market Council, Koji Yonetani, Executive Vice President of the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO), Marc Gerritsen, Head of Economic Cluster of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Tokyo and Willem Onno Jalink, General Manager of Larson Juhl Nippon K.K. and a former NCCJ Chairman.

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Nominees for the Deshima Awards 2016 in the segment Large Enterprises
Nominees for the Deshima Awards 2016 in the segment Small and Mid-Sized Enterprises