On June 19th, 2025, a delegation from HINT.GENT visited Osaka University together with the chancellor Prof. Rik Van de Walle, to gain insights into Japan’s pioneering work on the integration of artificial intelligence in healthcare. The visit centered around two groundbreaking initiatives: the AI Hospital Project and the AIDE Project, both led by Prof. Beverly Anne Yamamoto.
The AI Hospital Project explores how AI can be embedded into clinical workflows to enhance efficiency, improve patient experience, and support medical professionals. The delegation learned about real-world implementations of AI tools for triage, diagnostics, and administrative support, as well as the challenges of patient trust and human oversight in a technologically advanced clinical setting.
The AIDE Project—Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare for All: Designing a Sustainable Platform for Public and Professional Stakeholder Engagement—is a joint UK–Japan initiative led by Prof. Beverly Anne Yamamoto (Osaka University) and Prof. Jane Kaye (Oxford’s Centre for Health, Law and Emerging Technologies, HeLEX). Launched with funding from JST in Japan and ESRC in the UK, the project ran from 2020 to 2023 and brought together an interdisciplinary team of experts in medicine, ethics, law, and social sciences.
The core aim of AIDE is to establish mechanisms that ensure AI technologies in healthcare are not only technically proficient, but also socially robust, ethically sound, and broadly trusted. To this end, the project conducted empirical research to identify stakeholder perceptions—particularly of patients, clinicians, and the public—regarding AI deployment in diagnosis, treatment, and precision medicine.
A central outcome was the creation of a Patient and Public Involvement Panel (PPIP) in both the UK and Osaka. These panels helped inform research direction, highlighting expectations such as improved care quality and reduced health inequities, alongside concerns around autonomy, accountability, and data governance.
Through a mixed-methods approach, the project examined existing and planned AI applications—ranging from emotion recognition in clinical settings to diagnostic imaging—while exploring the safeguards and governance structures needed to uphold trust, transparency, and equitable benefits.
The Osaka University visit gave HINT.GENT a close-up view into AIDE’s stakeholder engagement models and its frameworks for sustainable governance—insights of direct value for shaping responsible AI healthcare infrastructures at UGent.
This visit offered valuable perspectives for HINT.GENT’s ongoing mission to build a responsible, multidisciplinary AI-health ecosystem in Flanders. The dialogue also marked the beginning of stronger ties between Ghent University and Osaka University, with plans for future exchange and collaboration on global AI-health challenges.
