Ichiro Innami, Professor, Faculty of Policy Management

I am specialized in two fields. One is decision-making, negotiation and organization field, while the other is health care policy. There were times when I thought I should focus on one field, but after all, I have studied both fields for more than 20 years, and my lectures and seminar classes cover both fields. In this article, I will focus on medical care policy.

Health care field is steadily growing while other Japanese economy sectors are experiencing at best low growth. Although we are well on the way to an extremely aging society never experienced throughout the world, health care system is not at all ready for that. Today, people make a fuss about the breakdown of health care system such as shortage of obstetricians, gynecologists and pediatricians or inefficiency of emergency medication, but in the medium and long terms, the problem of medical, nursing and custodial care for the elderly is much more serious. Political parties, lobbying groups are preoccupied with near-term tactics to promote their own egocentric interests, taking advantage of the public anger provoked by the media, which leaves us the serious problem unsolved in the near future. The policy of my seminar class is that students think by oneself the true nature of the problem and create policy options, without sticking to a certain academic field.

When I was a university student, I never thought I would become a scholar. I wanted to become a law judge, but after all, started my career in banking. Working in a bank, I realized that I liked studying. Regretting for not carrying out my original intentions, I decided to study at a graduate school in the United States to satisfy my new intellectual curiosity. I scored best in an internal examination to study abroad, but unfortunately, I was not given a chance. Instead, I was transferred to the Health Insurance Bureau of the Ministry of Health and Welfare, working as a legislative staff for two years. This is how I got into health policy.

At that time, major banks were in their glory days, but to realize my dream, I quit the bank without hesitation. Luckily enough, I got a Fulbright scholarship, and also from my relation with the Ministry of Health and Welfare, I was able to get support from a pharmaceutical company. I studied at the School of Government and School of Public Health at Harvard University. However, I was disillusioned with the case method at Harvard, so I decided to study for my Ph.D. at the Graduate School of Business (GSB) at the University of Chicago, which had a very good reputation in research using quantitative methods. I was planning to specialize in health policy because the GSB had world’s oldest health care program. However, after my first year at the doctoral program, the program was abandoned and the related professors left the university. So instead, I studied Behavioral Decision Theory and experimental economics. This is how I got into decision-making and negotiation field. The theme of my dissertation was about group decision-making.

Life never goes as expected. Everyone dies at the end, and only a very few people can make achievements that will be remembered in human history. When working hard to make an achievement and feeling the challenge, that is the happiest moment of life. Life is not about results, but it is about the process. I hope students devote themselves to their studies.

Faculty Profile

Prof. Ichiro Innami, Faculty of Policy Management

Having born in Yokohama in 1958, Prof. Innami graduated from the Faculty of Law of The University of Tokyo in 1982. In 1992, he obtained a Ph.D. at The University of Chicago. He has been serving for Keio since 1994. Today, his research is focused on hospitalization for non-medical reasons, medical and nursing care for the elderly, and analyses of health care expenditures. He enjoys playing golf at Chigasaki Mita-kai as a prevention of hypertension.

Student's Voice

Yumi Mizuguchi, Second-year Student of Master’s Program,
Graduate School of Media and Governance

Connecting the field and academics!

The motto of the Innami seminar class (medical welfare policy and management) is to “study hard and play hard!”, and we study policy and management in the health care field. Undergraduate students choose themes they are interested in, such as the issue of shortage of doctors, the issue of rejection of emergency patients or medical care in Cuba. Graduate students study issues related to medical care system and nursing care system for the elderly and medical expenses in a more academic manner. Our research style is to cut across different fields such as medicine, nursing, medical economics and sociology, and we deeply look into the true nature of the problems and figure out what kind of policies can be taken to solve them. As expressed in the word “breakdown of health care system”, nowadays, we can see public distrust of medical care and exhaustion in medical care providers. Making use of my experience working as a nurse at Keio University Hospital, I am seeking to realize a medical care system that is of high-quality and effective for the elderly, for the young, and for medical care providers.