Value Co-Creation Through Technical Intern Trainees In Japanese Healthcare

A long-term care insurance system in Japan was established in 2000 to specifically care for the elderly, but due to the declining birthrate, the working population is decreasing and there is a shortage of long-term care workers. In 2016, the Japanese government established the Asia Health and Wellbeing Initiative (AHWIN) to address this shortage of long-term care workers, aiming to build a sustainable healthcare system throughout the Asian region. In one such measure people from Viet Nam can learn Japanese-style long-term care skills as technical interns in Japan. The APS (Aijinkai, Pegasus, Seichokai) Consortium comprising three healthcare business groups based in Japan, has been actively implementing AHWIN initiatives. A case study of one such initiative examined based on the concept of value, and the co-creation of value between technical interns from Viet Nam and the Japanese healthcare system, with explanation of the long-term care environment. First, we summarize the origins of the healthcare system in Japan and clarify that the issue from the perspective of value. Next, we examine the shift to value creation through value co-creation between service providers and users, rather than unilateral process-oriented value creation, by utilizing the healthcare ecosystem based on the service ecosystem in service-dominant logic. The mega-level and macro-level value co-creation in the healthcare ecosystem was also found to affect the meso-level and micro-level value co-creation.