As an example of a new field, I will discuss our full-scale entry into precision medicine and support for pharmaceutical development. Even within this Medium Term Business Plan, the highest priorities have been assigned to achieving higher profits through edge IoT and the full-scale entry into what is a new field for Konica Minolta's healthcare technology, namely individualized treatment methods called "precision medicine," and support for pharmaceutical development. By honing the molecular imaging technology that is Konica Minolta's strength, we have been able to visualize the nature, volume and position of specific proteins in cancer cells.
Through the digitization of inspection methods that currently rely on analog approaches, it will become possible to classify patients. From the perspective of the patient's quality of life, it is extremely important to be able to raise the efficiency of drugs administered to patients, and this also opens the way to a resolution of the social issue of how to reduce medical expenses.
On the other hand, the background to our full-scale entry into pharmaceutical development support is that we hope that bringing samples digitalized by Konica Minolta into clinical testing to improve the efficacy of new cancer drugs will result in accelerated development of new drugs, and contribute to a reduction in medical expenses when viewed overall. This is why we are focusing on this area.