International Biophilia Rehabilitation Academy Director Kenji Ushizawa

Address / Greetings

I am Kenji Ushizawa, Director of the International Biophilia Rehabilitation Academy (IBRA).
It is my pleasure to greet you on the occasion of the 18th International Biophilia Rehabilitation conference (IBRC2023) as the chairperson. My specialty is statistics; I retired from university 10 years ago and now work as an advisor for a research and consulting firm, assisting them in their data analysis work. I am particularly interested in text mining (quantitative content analysis) and published a book on the subject five years ago.
There is a reason why I have accepted the chairperson of the Re-launch of the IBRC 2023.
Prof. Takizawa of Biophilia Institute, the President of the IBRA, was formerly a member of the Fujisawa City Council. And he was so passionate about politics that the Chairman of the Prefectural Assembly at the time nominated him to succeed. Despite this, we heard that Prof. Takizawa engaged in this research because he believed that by bringing his mother's rehabilitation (rehab) system to society, he would build a foundation for the elderly to acquire independent living at the advent of a super-aged society.
This Academy was started based on the Clinical Trial Committee by obtaining development funds from New Energy Development Organization (NEDO) in 1995 and conducting clinical trial research with the orthopedic department of the University of Tokyo. Then in 2000, with the advice from the Techno-Aid Association that the effectiveness of the rehabilitation system should be clarified, we obtained research funds including to promote the use of the walker. And the research was completed, and we were able to conduct a certain number of case-control studies before and after using the Rehab System.
At that time, there was not a high awareness of the importance of statistical evaluation. Nor the software for statistical analysis, such as SPSS, had not yet become commonplace. And then, an assistant professor at a university undertook the analysis. However, the effectiveness of the Takizawa method could not be verified. The reasons were that the sample size was not very large and that the analysis was based on overall scores only even though there were several evaluation items.
Under these circumstances, I met him by chance, and then we agreed and decided to reanalyze the same data. As a result, we analyzed each of the evaluation items one by one and found that there were statistically significant effects on several items, such as gait and toileting. It is possible that some of the evaluation items would have been even more effective if there had been a larger sample size. It was determined that the Takizawa method, which was centered on the motivative exercise was indeed effective before and after its application.
I was told by him about this study in 2000 was one of the triggers that led to this long-term study for 23 years since then. This is the reason I accept the chairmanship of this year's conference even despite not being good at for me to speak English.
I hope that this conference will lead to the restructuring of rehabilitation medicine in terms of its contribution to humanity.
I sincerely look forward to your participation in making this a fulfilling conference.
Thank you very much.