thinkout.co.jp

What It Is

Thinkout（株式会社Thinkout） is a medical AI company based in Kobe, Japan. It positions itself as embedding technology and management capabilities into Japan’s universal health insurance system, with a particular focus on ophthalmic care and surgical safety. Its products are not general-purpose SaaS tools; they are closer to a combination of vertical AI systems and customized consulting for hospitals and ophthalmology centers, covering AI Maker®, Deep Safety®, Deep Formula®, Deep Surgery®, Eye Center 3®, Rectah®, and more.

AI Capabilities and Core Use Cases

The official website presents a fairly complete set of AI capabilities. AI Maker® provides a distributed/federated learning environment, allowing data from multiple ophthalmology centers to be used to improve models without taking it outside the external network. Initial models cover fundus photographs, anterior segment photographs, OCT, and other data types, while fine-tuning helps reduce data requirements. Deep Safety® is used for operating-room safety management, including patient facial recognition, right/left eye verification, intraocular lens verification, and タイムアウトアバター. Deep Surgery® targets cataract surgery videos, supporting recognition of stages such as CCC and nucleus management, 15FPS real-time risk assessment, and AIガイダンス. Deep Formula® uses neural networks and backpropagation to optimize IOL formulas; the website claims an improvement of about 21% over Barret universalⅡ in some facilities.

LLMs, Generative AI, and Data Analytics

Beyond its core ophthalmology systems, Thinkout also offers a Stable Diffusion XL medical image generation service, development of medical chatbots based on ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity AI combined with RAG and prompt engineering, as well as machine learning model generation and statistical analysis services for tabular data, images, and videos. Typical implementations include dynamic manuals for patients and staff, medical imaging training, research design, and data analysis.

Pricing and Ease of Use

The official website does not disclose product pricing, deployment timelines, or SLA details. It only states that free consultation is available via a contact form, so the service is better suited to medical institutions with clear budgets and a willingness to engage in project-based discussions. Because it involves in-hospital databases, operating-room workflows, equipment, and collaboration among medical staff, its ease of use should not be understood in the same way as ordinary AI tools. The deployment barrier is expected to be higher than that of online tools, but once integrated into workflows, its value is concentrated in reducing surgical risk and improving information-sharing efficiency.

Pros, Cons, and Who It’s For

Its strengths are its highly vertical scenarios and clearly defined clinical problems, especially around high-responsibility steps in ophthalmic surgery such as right/left eye verification, IOL checks, and risk alerts. Its distributed learning approach also fits the sensitivity of medical data. The limitations are that much of the publicly available information comes from the vendor itself, with a lack of comprehensive third-party evaluations; pricing, APIs, Chinese-language support, and cross-border compliance are also not disclosed. It is suitable for Japanese ophthalmology hospitals, eye centers with high cataract surgery volumes, and medical AI research partners. It is less suitable for individuals or ordinary businesses looking for a ready-to-use general-purpose AI tool.

Access from China and Alternatives

The official website does not state the status of access, payment, or service support for mainland China, so it should be considered unknown. If Chinese institutions have similar needs, they can compare local medical imaging AI vendors, hospital informatization vendors, ophthalmology PACS/operating-room management systems, and medical knowledge assistants built on domestic large models with private RAG deployment. Before cross-border adoption, it is essential to confirm requirements around personal information protection, medical device compliance, data export, Chinese medical record adaptation, and after-sales response.