In Japan, the number of people certified as requiring long-term care (or support) exceeded 7 million for the first time as of the end of March 2024. This figure represents an increase of approximately 3 million people over the past 20 years. A more significant problem, however, is the shortage of long-term care workers. The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare estimates that approximately 2.4 million long-term care workers will be needed in fiscal year 2026. This number is projected to jump to approximately 2.72 million by fiscal year 2040. Among these, care managers are particularly in short supply across the entire long-term care industry. As a side note, care managers (certified care support specialists) are professionals who, under the long-term care insurance system, support elderly people certified as requiring long-term care or support, and their families, in utilizing appropriate long-term care services. Their main duties include creating care plans, coordinating with long-term care service providers, providing consultations, conducting certification assessments, and providing comprehensive management to support the independence of users.
There are small and medium-sized enterprises that are using artificial intelligence (AI) to overcome the labor shortage problem related to long-term care. Charm Care Corporation operates assisted living facilities primarily in the Kansai region. This corporation manages over 100 such facilities. Care managers develop care plans based on care records, sleep data, and interviews with family members and doctors. Traditionally, care managers manually created these care plans. The creation of care support plans and the associated administrative tasks required a tremendous amount of manpower. Therefore, they piloted a system that AI generates draft care schedules for residents. In this new system, care managers review and revise the drafts created by the AI. The time required for plan creation, which previously took up to four hours per person, has been reduced to approximately two hours. In an industry with a severe shortage of manpower, the intelligent use of AI to improve on-site services is crucial.
In the medical field, which has a longer history than the nursing care industry, AI is beginning to be used. Initially, it has been used in the first stage of a medical examination: the initial consultation. The use of “AI-powered medical interviews” is spreading as a process to gather information about lifestyle habits and other factors to obtain diagnostic clues. Until now, many hospitals have used paper questionnaires for these interviews. However, AI seems to be able to delve deeper into detailed symptoms and background information that cannot be captured by existing questionnaires. One AI-powered medical interview system changes the questions one after another based on the patient’s input, exploring the patient’s condition. It gathers diagnostic clues by asking patients about their symptoms, medical history, medication history, and lifestyle habits. This AI-powered medical interview system has built an algorithm that analyzes the relationship between symptoms and diseases based on more than 50,000 medical papers. With this algorithm, when a patient enters the examination room, the doctor is now provided with information on the diagnosis and treatment methods. If the long-term care industry (especially care managers) can utilize such medical methods, it will contribute to alleviating labor shortages and reducing the burden on caregivers.
