NTT—Innovating the Future with Upgrade 2024
NTT is a household name in Japan, the third-largest publicly traded company in the country after Toyota and Sony, and its dynamic loop logo can be seen in every town and village.
NTT is also an innovator and gives the world a view of the future with exhibitions throughout the year, including the Tsukuba Forum every May and the R&D Forum in Tokyo every November. NTT Group’s annual R&D budget is a staggering $3.6 billion.
Did you know that NTT is also building a name for itself outside Japan? And not just outside Japan, but in the heart of Silicon Valley, California, close to Apple, Meta and Alphabet? That’s Sunnyvale-based NTT Research.
NTT Research was inaugurated in July 2019 and has been led since the beginning by President and CEO Kazuhiro Gomi. Its mission: to upgrade reality in game-changing ways that improve lives and brighten our global future.
One of the ways that NTT Research explains its work to the world is with the “Upgrade” conferences in downtown San Francisco.
The first Upgrade event was held virtually over four days in September and October 2020. Upgrade 2020 introduced NTT Research to the tech community and announced: we are here; want to work with us? Events in September 2021 and March 2023 followed, each one a huge expansion in the number of presentations and sessions.
April saw the fourth NTT Research Upgrade event and it was bigger than ever. Over two days, on April 10 and 11, NTT Group members from all over the world came together to showcase 26 exhibits focusing on IOWN and Photonics, the Group’s work on artificial intelligence (AI), Human Sense technology, Sustainability, Well-Being & Healthcare, and Manufacturing. The event also saw several presentations and discussions on topics ranging from new technology that can help heart disease patients like never before, to NTT’s research on generative AI.
An event so packed with content is hard to sum up in a few words, but let’s try:
Peace of Mind—Technology designed to help humans live longer, healthier lives
Beauty—Because there has to be a point to the technology
Kindness—Technology designed by humans, for humans
Vision—NTT shining a light on the world
We’ve chosen four of the Upgrade 2024 exhibits to demonstrate what NTT means to the world.
Our first article is on how the latest digital twin technology may one day help to save your life.
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Upgrade 2024: Peace of Mind
Wherever we are in the world and whatever our situation, there’s something we all have in common: health concerns. Is the doctor prescribing the right treatment? Are the meds the best ones for me?
Cardiac care is a huge area of concern, especially when it comes to diagnosing and treating acute myocardial infarction and acute heart failure, both of which demand rapid, precise interventions. Traditional methods, involving manual adjustments of multiple drugs and devices, can be time-consuming and less effective than desired, due to the complexities of individual patient responses.
Upgrade 2024 saw NTT Research’s concept for how to help mitigate the problem: the Autonomous Closed-Loop Intervention System (ACIS).
ACIS aims to improve the treatment of severe cardiac events by autonomously optimizing and administering multiple cardiac drugs and therapies simultaneously. It aims for metabolic optimization by closely monitoring myocardial oxygen consumption, vital for maintaining heart function. ACIS also predicts and prevents scenarios that could lead to decompensation, where the heart can no longer maintain adequate blood flow due to the exhaustion of its autoregulatory mechanisms.
The core of ACIS is the Cardiovascular Digital Twin, a model that uses electrical circuit analogues to simulate heart contractions and blood flow. By adjusting specific parameters to reflect each patient’s unique physiological characteristics, the Digital Twin allows precise and personalized medical interventions.
ACIS uses extensive cardiovascular data from individual patients and broader populations, along with a comprehensive drug library. It’s then able to dispense the correct medications and adjust dosages in a tailored and timely way. By continuously updating the patient's Digital Twin, ACIS ensures that drug delivery is always accurate.
ACIS is also flexible: it accommodates new drug treatments and mechanical support devices as they become available. Physicians using the system can input desired outcomes for drug therapies and ACIS will autonomously manage the treatment to achieve these goals, improving clinical decision support and allowing doctors to focus on more complex aspects of patient care.
For patients experiencing myocardial infarction, timely and precise drug delivery could save heart tissue and improve recovery chances. What’s more, ACIS could help improve healthcare access in remote areas. Once fully developed, it can be deployed around the world, bringing advanced cardiac care to regions lacking specialized medical infrastructure.
ACIS is designed to work alongside the Cardiovascular Digital Twin. But as the technology develops, there is every possibility that Digital Twins can be created for other, vitally important parts of the body, all continuously refining themselves with new data from ongoing patient care. As ACIS develops, its impact on patient outcomes and healthcare accessibility will grow, delivering better public health and greater peace of mind.
For more details about the Upgrade 2024 event, please see this link:
Come back next time, when we'll tell you all about a new and beautiful way of presenting images: the “Kirameki” display technology.
Upgrade 2024: Peace of Mind through Technology