September 2026 Industry Monthly

Expert's View

While EMR adoption targets have been set, whether frontline staff actually experience efficiency gains depends on how the systems are operated. Cloud-native migration can look like a vendor-driven conversation, but it also bears on data portability and business continuity during disasters — matters that affect patients too. The budget figures alone don't tell us who the DX push ultimately serves. It's also worth noting that the "zero non-adoption" target applies only to hospitals with 200 or more beds — smaller hospitals and clinics fall outside this goal, meaning the benefits of EMR adoption will likely reach different scales of provider in sequence rather than all at once.

Expert's View

The scope of required bridging studies is what really drives biosimilar development cost, so differences across the three jurisdictions shape development strategy directly. For patients in Japan, this is ultimately a supply question — how quickly, and at what cost, products already available overseas become accessible domestically. What looks like a technical regulatory debate is, underneath, a question of patient access — though it's worth keeping in mind that this document is the association's own translation and summary, not the regulators' primary statements themselves.

Expert's View

An isolated 7.5% month-on-month decline might look like a setback, but the market was actually up 2.0% year on year, so this isn't evidence of a shrinking market. What's more notable is that Mounjaro, in the obesity/diabetes category, has climbed to 15.7 billion yen in a single month — a sign that the top of the rankings is gradually tilting toward metabolic disease products.

Expert's View

The decision to transfer worldwide rights to an overseas company just as the FDA accepted the filing illustrates how, in rare disease drug development, the work of discovering a compound and the work of getting it approved and supplied across many countries are increasingly carried out by different companies. For patients, what matters is not who holds development and marketing rights but how quickly the medicine reaches the countries that need it after approval — worth tracking as LEO Pharma's global rollout proceeds.

Expert's View

A prescription surge earlier than usual tends to coincide with periods of increased school activity and travel, putting pressure both on clinic capacity and on managing severe cases at home. We were not able to confirm the detailed epidemic curve or age breakdown, so the headline figure alone does not support concluding that this year is more severe than a typical one.

Expert's View

There is considerable variation, by symptom type, between the policy direction of promoting self-medication and the threshold at which consumers actually feel comfortable managing symptoms with over-the-counter medicine rather than seeing a doctor. Rather than issuing a blanket message of 'treat mild symptoms yourself,' this points to a need for information design that clarifies, symptom by symptom, where self-judgment is actually reasonable. Because the survey covers residents of the greater Tokyo and Kansai areas only, and measures stated intentions rather than observed behavior, it should not be equated with actual nationwide health-seeking behavior.