The progress of medical technologies has contributed to the decrease of lethal diseases. However, it has made a number of diseases such as cancers become chronic and has given rise to more people living with incurable illness which are different from "medical cure." New drugs and other technologies which may change treatments methods and people's lives are continually being developed. Thus an important feature of today's ill experience is that it is hard to foresee the future concerning possible (positive or negative) changes. We can no longer make sense of the diversified and complicated experiences from the existing perspective of medical management which divides them into "curable/incurable," or "disease/health." This study aims to form new concepts to grasp the way of living chronic illness through the approach of studying people with prevailing disease.
 Methods: (1) A wide range of review on literature, memoirs and blogs depicting ill people's lives. (2) Participant observation in various settings, such as hospitals, homes, and patient groups by making use of the researchers' backgrounds as practitioners. (3) Holding a community café as a collaboration with ill people and their families to set up a site for outreach and publicizing. (4) Concept formation through phenomenological analyses of qualitative data obtained from (1)-(3).
 The results will contribute in (1) to nurture the socially required comprehensive abilities for health care professionals to examine and care for chronic patients, and (2) to build inclusive workplaces and society by cultivating readiness for more people to understand the lives of the chronically ill and to accept their diversity.