Okayama University “Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering in Health Systems” to be Established

November 24, 2017

From April 2018, Okayama University is set to establish the “Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering in Health Systems”.

To resolve the various issues currently directly confronting Japan, including an aging society with low fertility and the impoverishment of local communities and economies, it is becoming necessary for our country to make appropriate and steady use of the results obtained thus far from academic collaboration between medicine and engineering technology in human society.
Based on these circumstances, the “Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering in Health Systems” will conduct interdisciplinary education and research centering around knowledge and technology in the fields of specialization (engineering, medicine, health, humanities, social sciences and others) the students have learned through their undergraduate or master’s courses, but also going beyond those barriers. The goal of this graduate school will be to foster professionals and researchers capable of observing the state of society and its challenges in the fields of medical, welfare and other work, making use of their academic and scientific knowledge in dealing with those problems, and working with people to create new things or new social mechanisms.

*What is the ‘Health System’?
The word “health” is used here with its original English meaning, in other words, indicating “all states of human health and happiness that occur in the absence of effects from illness.” Likewise, “system” is used with its original English meaning, that is, indicating “all structural elements and their interrelationships” within a given set. These have been brought together as “health system” in this graduate school’s name, to mean “all structural elements and their interrelationships brought together for the sake of human health and wellbeing.”