Overseas Exchange Center (OVEX) was established in 2015. The main business is to support international personnel exchanges, such as training at various departments of Kyushu University Hospital (KUH) and hospital tours for visitors. OVEX also coordinates and helps KUH staff for overseas training, visiting facilities. Moreover, we support learning foreign language (English / Chinese) for hospital staff to meet the international needs of this hospital such as foreign patients, which are increasing year by year.

To date, this center has supported the acceptance of training for more than 500 foreign medical staff from more than 40 countries, including its predecessor organization. We often request training in various departments in the hospital, and we would like to express our sincere gratitude for the cooperation of all the staff members in KUH who accepted them. We also supported the overseas dispatch of more than 300 staff to 26 countries. Through such international exchange, the circle of friendship has expanded all over the world.

However, 2020 was an unforgettable year in which we could neither accept training from overseas nor dispatch overseas. Even so, the need for international exchange has not disappeared, and there are still many requests from overseas to receive training at KUH. We would like to keep maintaining the friendly relations that we have built up so far. We hope that the day will come when people can come and go freely as before, and at the same time, we would like to make efforts to promote international exchange in a new form that suits the times.

Thank you very much.

The Overseas Exchange Center (OVEX) was established in April 2015, as one of three centers in the International Medical Department (iMed) in Kyushu University Hospital. It aims to accelerate international academic exchanges between our hospital and hospitals abroad.

Fifty years ago, when I was a child, it took over 12 hours to travel from my city to Tokyo by conventional express train. Now it is easy to make one-day business trips to Tokyo. This has been a big and surprising change during the last 50 years. In the same 12 hours, we can fly from Japan all the way to the US or to Europe, and I feel that the earth truly is getting smaller and smaller. When you are asked if you can make a one-day business trip to the US or Europe, you may well say “no way!” I read an article the other day, however, that predicted that it would soon take only 30 minutes to fly from London to New York, using a new type of aircraft with a rocket engine, rather than a jet engine.

The 1970s was the decade of mass travel, with the birth of big commercial airplanes, and is sometimes called Internationalization Age 1.0. The current age, with its growth of Internet communications, is called Internationalization Age 2.0, because we can access all kinds of information from all over the world instantly, without spending much money. Fifty years ago, communities were regional. Now the whole of Japan is one society, thanks to the highly developed transportation system. We can even talk to each other right round the globe, just as if we were face-to-face, using smartphones. It seems very likely that we will come to consider the whole world one community within the next 50 years.

OVEX will work for medical providers visiting from abroad, to maximize their stay in Kyushu University Hospital. It will help those who visit abroad to experience a variety of different cultures, and will provide our hospital with an internationalized atmosphere to support everyone to become more international in their outlook.