How we work
English throughout the conversation, Japanese in the deliverables. It is worth knowing which is which before you get in touch, so nothing about the arrangement comes as a surprise later.
Most of our clients outside Japan run the engagement through their Japan entity or a local partner, with English email running alongside it. That is the arrangement the points above are built around.
If you have neither yet, tell us in your first message. It does not stop us working together, but it changes how we scope the work — and it is much easier to plan for at the start than halfway through.
A note on where the data comes from.
Almost everything we hold begins as a Japanese-language public record: notifications filed with regional bureaus of the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, reports submitted by hospitals to prefectural governments, disclosure requests, and the websites that medical institutions publish themselves. The terminology in those sources is specific to how Japanese healthcare is administered, and much of it has no settled English equivalent.
We would rather hand you a figure whose definition is exact than a translation that quietly changes what it means. So the analysis stays in the language the sources are written in, and the data itself — the part your systems will actually consume — comes with an English dictionary for every column.
Tell us what you are trying to decide and we will come back with what we hold, what it costs, and what it will not tell you.
Engagements typically start from several million Japanese yen — indicatively, tens of thousands of US dollars. The US dollar figure is for scale only and is not a quoted price. Scope, coverage and contract term determine the final figure.
