Pharmaceutical companies in South Korea are accelerating moves into hospital-based digital health care, expanding beyond drug sales into patient monitoring and hospital systems.
According to the Korea Digital Industry Association, the domestic digital health market in 2024 grew 18.7% from a year earlier to 7.7409 trillion won, marking a second straight year of double-digit growth. The shift is being driven by faster commercialization than new drug development and pressure from lower prices for generic medicines, prompting drugmakers to seek new growth engines.
Daewoong Pharmaceutical, which set up a dedicated digital health care marketing division in 2024, is widening hospital adoption of its artificial intelligence solutions. Its flagship product is the bedside monitoring system thynC, which collects and analyzes key vital signs — including electrocardiograms, oxygen saturation and respiratory rate — around the clock and sends real-time alerts to medical staff when abnormalities are detected.
ThynC has sped up deployment after becoming the first in South Korea to secure reimbursement under long-term care benefits. The number of installed beds jumped from 90 in 2023 to a cumulative total of about 20,000 last year.
The revenue model is usage-based. Daewoong collects payments from hospitals and then pays the developer, Seers Technology, about 3 million won per bed. Contracts are signed by ward, and once installed, the system can generate recurring revenue.
Daewoong said revenue from its digital health care business totaled 50.9 billion won last year, and it aims to expand that to about 300 billion won this year. Industry officials say that once such systems become embedded in hospital operations, they are difficult to replace, potentially creating a long-term business base.
Yuhan is also moving quickly into digital health care. The company recently partnered with digital health firm Huino to commercialize MemoCue, an AI-based patient monitoring system, and began supplying it to H Plus Yangji Hospital.
MemoCue analyzes hospitalized patients’ ECG data in real time to detect warning signs early. It extends monitoring beyond intensive care units to general wards and is expected to be applied to about 100 beds. The system can use a hospital’s existing communications infrastructure, which the company says reduces the burden of adoption.
Yuhan has previously built up hospital data through MemoPatch, a long-term ECG monitoring system. At Severance Hospital, cumulative tests have surpassed 10,000, providing real-world use cases. With strengths in major treatment areas such as cancer and cardiovascular disease, the accumulated data could also be used for new drug development and marketing strategies.
“As the range of use inside hospitals expands, the pace of data accumulation also speeds up,” an industry official said. “That can widen long-term gaps in business competitiveness between companies.”
* This article has been translated by AI.
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