The Global Coalition on Aging (GCOA) and the Health and Global Policy Institute (HGPI) today launched a new report identifying incentives for health innovation as a fundamental requirement for economic growth and fiscal sustainability in Japan and other rapidly ageing societies across the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and worldwide. The new report, Incentivizing Innovation for Healthy Ageing and Economic Growth in Super-Ageing Japan, brings together key insights from a private roundtable hosted by GCOA in May in collaboration with HGPI and sponsored by Pfizer Japan.

At the May roundtable, Japanese and global experts and decision makers concluded that spending on health innovation must be treated as an investment for the fiscal health of the nation. The report promotes the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals, the UN and World Health Organization Decade of Healthy Ageing, and the OECD promotion of lifelong social participation as vital to a 21st century path to achieve healthier and fiscally sound societies. Such sentiments were powerfully echoed during the roundtable and reflected in the report.

The roundtable report offers four key takeaways to support the innovation in health that super-ageing societies and all OECD ageing societies require:

1. Japan’s health, economic, and social goals align well with the global frameworks for healthy ageing found in the WHO’s Decade of Healthy Ageing and the OECD Strategy for Ageing Societies.
2. Innovation is integral to the achievement of active ageing goals, and it is important that policies be put into place that actively encourage such innovation.
3. Innovations in healthy ageing will impact labor markets.
4. Innovation for COVID-19 vaccines emerged as a clear example of the need for an environment supportive of health innovation—encouraged by the government and celebrated by the public.

For further information, please see the report below.