Activities

Kyushu University’s five research institutions including the SBRC, are involved in the Social Business Technology Lab. The SBRC is engaged in various research projects in cooperation with companies and independent administrative institutions.

Social Business Technology Lab (SocialTechLab) research has engaged dozens of researchers in Kyushu University. Five research institutes are actively involved-

(1) Faculty of Information Science and Electrical Engineering, Kyushu University

Responsible for solving the technical challenges mentioned above. More than 10 graduate students (including 6 PhD students) have carried out their research on this topic. More than 30 international articles have been published. The results are regularly updated in www.socialtech.gramweb.net

(2) Medical Information Center in Kyushu University Hospital

Responsible for development of triage logic, Personal Health Records and analyzing medical data. Obtained national level research fund to create PHC BigData.

(3) Institute of Decision Science for a Sustainable Society, Kyushu University

Researchers from public health, social sciences, maternal and child health are engaged in PHC research. Expansion of PHC in India and Cambodia gave an opportunity to carry out comparative studies.

(4) Robert T. Huang Entrepreneurship Center of Kyushu University (QREC)

Social Entrepreneurship Class engages more than 20 students per year for field studies in developing countries. Students are encouraged to identify health issues in developing countries, develop quick solutions to health issues and present them to international communities.

(5) Yunus and Shiiki Social Business Research Center (SBRC), Kyushu University

Assists to develop social business model from the PHC prototype. Encourages with funds to present our work in social business-related events such as Social Business Day, Social Business Academia Conference.

Social Business Technology research has collaborated with Grameen Family since 2007 in the areas of Social Information Infrastructure development. All the research projects e.g. village information platform (GramWeb), electronic passbook for microfinance borrowers (ePassbook), $300 portable health clinic (GramHealth), keeping a community clean and healthy (GramClean), virtual blood bank (GramHealth) projects are field tested by the help of Grameen Communications in Bangladesh.

Joint research agreements have been signed with other academia such as University of Dhaka, Biyani College in India, Asian Institute of Technology in Thailand.

Toyota has been very supportive since 2011 for healthcare and mobility research. JICA provided 6 years fund for developing ICT based farming and marketing platform. JETRO and Sharp contributed in developing ePassbook. Konica Minolta provided portable x-Ray device in portable health clinic project. NTT collaborated with us in finding solutions to provide low power solar solutions to off-grid villages.