OREANDA-NEWS. August 24, 2011. ITOCHU Corporation (headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo; Masahiro Okafuji, President & CEO; hereinafter “ITOCHU”) announced today that Omron Colin Co., Ltd. (headquartered in Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo; Yutaka Kobayashi, President & CEO; hereinafter “Omron Colin”), a medical equipment sales arm of Omron Healthcare Co., Ltd. (headquartered in Ukyo-ku, Kyoto; Kiichiro Miyata, President & CEO; hereinafter “Omron Healthcare”), and ITOCHU have concluded a sales cooperation contract for medical equipment for use at health screening establishments and agreed to jointly promote provision of medical equipment and services in the field of preventive medicine.

 As the first step, ITOCHU will commence sales cooperation for HDS-2000 DUALSCAN, a medical-usage visceral fat measurement device that is the world’s first to use the impedance method. It will be launched by Omron Colin on August 29, 2011.

With this arrangement, Omron Colin and ITOCHU plan to strengthen the sales promotion of medical equipment for the fields of preventive medicine and health screening, utilizing both Omron Colin’s sales channels mainly consisting of hospitals and clinics and ITOCHU’s sales channels for operators of health screening and comprehensive medical checkups.

Forming partnerships with health screening establishments nationwide, ITOCHU provides services related to the field of preventive medicine through the Wellness Communications Corporation (headquartered in Koto-ku, Tokyo; Hayami Shimizu, President & CEO; hereinafter “Wellness Communications”), ITOCHU’s wholly owned operating company. These include proxy performing of advanced booking of health screenings and complete medical checkups on behalf of companies and health insurance organizations, information processing and payments as well as computer-based management of information from results of health screenings and complete medical checkups. With this mutually beneficial cooperation, Omron Colin and ITOCHU aim at achieving further business expansion in the field of preventive medicine by providing medical equipment also for the field of preventive medicine.

In addition to the new device for measuring the content of visceral fat to be launched on August 29, Omron Colin sells equipment for preventive medicine such as medical equipment that enables measurement of arteriosclerosis progression. However, since the company’s major sales channels are hospitals and clinics, it was confronted with the challenge of strengthening its ability to distribute preventive medical equipment to health screening establishments and complete medical checkup facilities, where the need for such equipment is high.
 Under such circumstances, Omron Colin decided to stride ahead to further strengthen its efforts to expand sales channels through the sales corporation arrangement with ITOCHU, which has been developing business in the field of preventive medicine, mainly in service provision. The two companies will work together in conducting sales promotion, such as joint campaigns.

The companies will commit resources to providing products, services and systems that are useful for early disease detention, not to mention the expansion of existing products that they handle.
HDS-2000 visceral fat measurement device

The HDS-2000 DUALSCAN visceral fat measurement device is for medical institution use. It is the world’s first such device to use the impedance method to enable safe and easy measurement of visceral fat content.
 Key features
• The proprietary impedance method enables safe and easy measurement of visceral fat content in a manner highly correlated with X-ray and CT diagnosis, with no risk of radiation exposure.
• Examination results are output in a user-friendly report form, enabling explanation of the status of the visceral fat content to the examinee in clearly understandable terms.
• Measurement can be made in a short time period of less than five minutes.