After building a hospital in Cambodia, this doctor is bootstrapping a new mission in Japan

Founder Hiroaki Ishimatsu as he appears on the company’s homepage

“I built a hospital in Cambodia. There was a book about it,” Hiroaki Ishimatsu tells me as he hands over the book. Such an accomplishment would be the crowning achievement for most people, but for the understated Ishimatsu, it has become a footnote to a much greater mission. Where some entrepreneurs are motivated by money, others by the pure challenge of building a business, Ishimatsu just wants to make society a better place for those less fortunate than him. His latest project, Dr. Joy, is the culmination of his altruism, medical background, and entrepreneurial spirit.

Dr. Joy, which just took home the top prize and audience award at KDDI Open Lab’s seventh demo day, is designed to help hospitals operate more efficiently. Hospital staff can use it to communicate with one another privately or publicly among co-workers. Meeting notes can be disseminated and conversations can be continued online. It also has a work shift sharing calendar to keep everyone up to date on scheduling.

With picture sharing and colorful stickers, Dr. Joy’s design resembles Facebook when using a desktop computer and Line when using a smartphone. Unlike those services, Dr. Joy is a closed community using Truste and Secom to keep data confidential.

Creating a new digital infrastructure for hospital workers is appealing to patients and employees tired of inefficient paperwork and poor communication. However, hospitals, although they are steeped in tradition and tiny budgets, are already digitizing their work. A prescription punched in on Floor 12 is ready for pickup down at the entrance within 30 minutes. It is also not uncommon for hospital staff to securely access their own online network remotely for checking in on patients.

Dr. Joy is accessible on tablets, PCs, smartphones, and legacy phones

Ishimatsu, a practicing doctor himself, knows this all too well, but believes the current system still lacks efficiency. He says that current efforts to take hospital work online focus on transmitting and recording official orders. He wants staff to easily communicate the small details that contextualize those orders for patients and communicate with each other as if they were using a social network. Hence the purposeful references to Facebook and Line in the design.

Though Dr. Joy is a free service, Ishimatsu is working on some monetization options. For now, he is playing them close to the vest. One new wrinkle he did reveal is called Family Joy. Using the same system as Dr. Joy, hospital staff, patients, and family members will be able to communicate with one another.

Destined to be a doctor, choosing to be an entrepreneur

Ishimatsu’s first calling was medicine. Starting with his father, and stretching back roughly 150 years, the men in his family have been doctors. It’s tough to be a combo-breaker in those circumstances, but Ishimatsu says his parents never pressured him one way or another. Seeing how his father impacted people’s lives is what convinced him to become a doctor. “My father would see people even without receiving money. When I was young I would see people visiting him to say thank you. I thought this was a good job,” he recalls.

That focus on public service manifested itself during his school days. Ishimatsu worked with Side by Side International, did fundraising drives in Tokyo, and managed to fund the building of a hospital in rural Cambodia during 2009. His efforts inspired not only a book, but a movie as well.

The 24-hour Graphis Health Centre is simple: nine beds and sparsely staffed. Ishimatsu explains that the biggest challenge is teaching the nurses and doctors how to use some of the donated equipment.

Inspired by his Cambodia venture, Ishimatsu took the unusual step to work in Japan’s southernmost islands – Okinawa. Though the beaches are a popular tourist destination, he went there because his impact on the local citizens would be greater than if he had remained in Tokyo.