The effect of acupoint stimulation as an adjuvant therapy for obsessive-compulsive disorder: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

The sharing economy has been permeating into the conventional industry frames with its unique resource distribution patterns and value generation processes due to the ever-changing nature of digital technologies and radical shifts in socioeconomic frameworks (). It has creeped into high-barrier specialty domains such as healthcare (). Technological change is driving social transformation, profoundly impacting the healthcare sector, particularly long-term care services. Long-term care services are closely intertwined with the daily lives of older adult in Japan, and how to guide them to proactively adapt to new industry changes and help them alleviate digital inequality is a topic of close interest to scholars (, ). Japan’s previous single-mode older adult care system, which relied primarily on long-term care insurance (LTCI) services, has been broken. The rapid development of services outside of LTCI has become an important supplement for seniors to age in place and achieve successful aging. Since the LTCI system was officially introduced in 2000, the Japanese government saw the need to invoke systematic policy changes as the number of the older adult grows in population thus putting fiscal strains on their budgets (). These comprised modifying the cost-sharing tool of LTCI via modifying enrollee ratios of the copayment, the range of service coverage and the duration and frequency of the service (, , ). Additionally, the 2016 “Flexibilization of Mixed Care Services” policy () was launched, which diversifies the supply of long-term care services by breaking the monopoly of supplying the public services. Through these efforts, older adults have gradually become aware that with increasing age and increasing care demands, the shortcomings of traditional LTCI services in terms of coverage breadth and service depth will become more visible. Relying solely on existing services is insufficient not only to guarantee quality of life but also to achieve successful aging (). That is why non-LTCI services have become an indispensable complement to home-based older adult care (), and the demand in the market has a massive impact on the development of the industry. The services market outside of LTCI has shown a healthy growth and this has exceeded 77 trillion yen (around $514.1 billion) by 2050 according to the Action Plan 2023 of a New Healthy Society by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (). Nevertheless, the traditional older adult care service industry is often constrained from rapid development by factors such as the lack of professional caregivers, slow response of the provided services, and the lack of adjustment to individual needs (). The sharing economy technology will lead the transformation of LTCI services from traditional services to digital services, injecting new momentum into the industry’s development. It successfully breaks through the geographical barriers and information barriers using its main strengths of efficient resource integration and flexibilities in the provision of services (, ) and opens new avenues to the digital transformation of other services not delivered by LTCI. Such models as shared service models such as Ichirou company create internet technology platforms to enable accurate delivery of fragmented care service providers to the demand side of the older adult. This creatively incorporates the fragmentation and underutilization of care resources, which is important in enhancing the efficiency of resource use and provides a feasible solution to the varied and customized care requirements of older adults. Japanese seniors may be able to age successfully by accessing a shared service platform outside of long-term care insurance, represented by this company.