{"id":355343,"date":"2026-01-06T15:19:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-06T15:19:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/355343\/"},"modified":"2026-01-06T15:19:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T15:19:11","slug":"japanese-startups-tout-chatbot-powered-apps-as-treatment-for-medical-conditions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/355343\/","title":{"rendered":"Japanese startups tout chatbot-powered apps as treatment for medical conditions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Japan\u2019s medical industry has generally been slow to embrace digital technology, with many clinics still keeping patient records and writing prescriptions on paper.<\/p>\n<p>But a few domestic startups have recently launched chatbot-powered apps designed to help treat a range of conditions, such as hypertension, alcohol addiction and insomnia. Unlike the plethora of lifestyle apps anyone with a smartphone can download, these are prescription-only medical apps whose efficacy has been demonstrated in clinical trials.<\/p>\n<p>For Taro Ueno, a psychiatrist and brain researcher, the idea to develop an app for insomnia came from observing how doctors in Japan overprescribe sleeping pills.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Japan\u2019s medical industry has generally been slow to embrace digital technology, with many clinics still keeping patient records&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":355344,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[226,7295,102,3100,2306,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-355343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mobile","tag-apps","tag-chatbots","tag-health","tag-medicine","tag-mobile","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=355343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/355344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=355343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=355343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=355343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}