Miyuki Katai

I have been specialized in Gender Medicine as an endocrinologist. Gender Medicine that focuses on gender and sex differences behind illness is useful for diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of illness, and helps promote to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages. For example, it has been found that there are sex differences in the pain areas of life-threatening ischemic heart disease, and that women complain of more atypical pain areas than men. The survival rate changes depending on whether or not people know the fact of these gender and sex differences. Compared with men, women are more difficult to diagnose because the endocrine environment changes markedly during the menstrual cycle, pregnancy, childbirth, and menopause, which modifies the pathology. Women become aware of various autonomic symptoms associated with menopause and menstruation, but they are often treated as indefinite complaints, and the diseases that cause disorders are often overlooked. Since 2019, it has been adopted as a women’s health issue by the Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development (AMED), and I became the R & D representative of “Development of AI diagnosis support navigation system WaiSE that supports female medical care”. WaiSE is a diagnostic support application that helps to improve the accuracy of female medical treatment by organizing various symptoms of women and leading to diagnosis.

The ratio of female physicians in Japan recently has been increasing in the younger age groups, but it is still the lowest among the OECD countries. The ratio of female physicians is lower in the older age groups, and due to the handicap of career development, there has been few female role models as leaders. I have been engaged in research and support to solve these problems as a pioneer in Japan. After returning from the United States in 2001, with the experience of working at affiliate hospitals of Harvard Medical School in Boston, translated Women in Medicine -career and life management published in the U.S. into Japanese in 2006. Since then, it has been used as a teaching material for career education in medical schools all over Japan. In 2006, I was in charge of career support for female physicians and medical students at Shinshu University. Since 2008, I have been a member of the Gender Equality Committee at Association of Japan Medical Colleges and also a member of the Tokyo Metropolitan Gender Equality Counseling Committee. We are sustainably researching and working to achieve the gender equality in Medicine and contribute it to medical care and society.