Interview of Toshio Takiguchi, President and CEO of Canon Medical Corporation at ECR Overture 2022

Thank you, Professor Catalano, for this opportunity and nice introduction. Hello to those joining us today. I have the privilege of presenting Canon Medical. As you say, Canon Medical, like ESR and its members, is a truly global organization with a presence in over 150 countries. We have a very rich history in medical imaging: as far back as 1914, our predecessor company called Tokyo Electric started development of Japan's first X-ray tube. In the 100-plus years since, our business has grown to a global entity with a worldwide reputation for innovation, reliability, and customer focus. We have a comprehensive portfolio of advanced medical imaging solutions, from diagnostic and interventional imaging systems to healthcare IT solutions for the wider healthcare enterprise. I have been with the company for many years now — you can recognize my hair — starting with Toshiba as an engineer in the clinical laboratory business, working my way through many roles before becoming President and CEO in 2014. I remember that is the year when I met Professor Catalano at the RSNA, not long after Canon Inc. acquired Toshiba Medical, and we officially became Canon Medical Systems Corporation in January 2018.

Well, my vision is for Canon Medical to become the leader in visionary healthcare solutions. Through collaborative efforts with medical professionals, we want to provide innovative solutions that inspire the medical community and enrich life for patients. Because we believe that quality of life should be a given, not the exception. This is all underpinned by our 'Made for Life' philosophy. I hope many of your members may be familiar with 'Made for Life,' which is very important to me. It describes our shared value: to contribute to the work of medical professionals such as you and your members by providing our technology and solutions, so that you in turn can deliver quality care for your patients. There has been no more important time in my lifetime than now, during this prolonged pandemic, to ensure we are living and delivering on this value every day. This management philosophy, 'Made for Life,' governs our commitment to being recognized as a world leader in innovation while we continue to develop breakthrough technologies and applications to support imaging and diagnostic and therapeutic needs. We're also committed to ensuring such innovations are outcomes-driven, and the results can be seen and experienced through Canon Medical seminars and education events during this meeting too.

The pandemic caused significant changes for us as well. With our existing solutions, we were able to provide contributions to medical professionals using CT and ultrasound equipment, together with antibody testing systems for the Japanese market only. Throughout these two years, we continued to support medical professionals in that way, and that has also inspired us to think about the future after the pandemic. Endemic, it may be called. We need to live with this pandemic for some time after COVID, and we need to prepare for things like how to sterilize the systems in an efficient way, or things like that.

Okay, of course. Let me start by addressing the second part of your question by describing 'Altivity.' At Canon Medical, we are passionate about developing intelligent imaging solutions that help clinicians leverage the vast, often overwhelming quantities of data delivered every day, transforming that data into essential insights that contribute to improved outcomes for patients. Canon Medical has been continuously redefining the role of AI in healthcare over the past few years with the introduction of our advanced intelligent Clear IQ engine known as AI-C, our deep learning spectral solutions, and our automation platform. We have made a significant contribution to the work of physicians around the world. To align our efforts with our 'Made for Life' philosophy, we have consolidated our AI solutions under one main brand and concept called Altivity. Our commitment to the imaging community with Altivity is to make intelligent healthcare easy. This commitment is supported by the promise to deliver informed healthcare fast, tailored care, and efficient workflows. Altivity's informed healthcare enhances clinical confidence through the delivery of high-quality images accompanied by relevant integrated applications that help you make informed decisions in real time at the point of care delivery. With Altivity's fast tailored care, you can deliver results quickly and accurately for a more personalized approach for patients. Efficient workflows create simple streamlined AI-driven workflows that optimize resource utilization and ensure medical teams have the insights they need to work smarter every day. As we concentrate our efforts on the development of AI where it is needed most, you will find more systems and solutions offered by Canon Medical powered by AI.

Sure. Collaborative imaging is all about providing patient-centered care while facilitating smarter healthcare spending and delivering a value-based healthcare model, all powered by our Altivity solutions. Collaborative imaging is about bringing a multimodality, multi-specialty approach that maintains the patient, not the individual exams or data sets, at the central focus. Collaborative imaging is about truly partnering with your institution to deliver the insights you need for each patient and for the financial and utilization impact to your department of their care delivery. At ECR, this year your theme is 'Building Bridges.' You could liken collaborative imaging to that concept: facilitating or building the bridge between multidisciplinary teams.

Our 'Made for Life' philosophy drives us to continually improve and innovate ways to help our customers and partners help their patients. So it is very important to us to share those innovations with your members, to participate in the education and information transfer around those new emerging technologies and solutions, so those innovations can be recognized, understood, accepted, and ultimately integrated into patient care practice. Your organization ESR does a wonderful job of providing platforms and opportunities for that information exchange, so it is also important for us to hear from you and your members about innovations in care delivery, impacts on delivery of service, and challenges facing the industry. Your annual conference again provides wonderful opportunities for us to learn all this. This again relates to building bridges. Participation in this meeting enables us to build many bridges across many different trains that lead to ongoing innovations in our service delivery that better align to the real needs of you and your colleagues. Of course, we are all really looking forward to the time when we can actually do all this in person once again, in another attraction of your meeting, the beautiful city of Vienna, later this year in July, I believe.

Thank you again, thank you very much, thank you.