Ko Sang-baek, president of the Korea Health Industry Development Institute (KHIDI), is moving to realign the institute's overseas support network, expanding its U.S. footprint to Texas while weighing a merger with or relocation of its Kazakhstan office to Europe. He also proposed a "two-track" system for medical data that would use both anonymized data and data collected with individual consent, to strengthen the AI and digital health foundation underpinning the industry's competitiveness abroad.
"It is true that results tied to global expansion are increasing significantly," Ko said at a press briefing on Sept. 29. "The U.S. market is expanding considerably, so we are considering Texas as well as Boston." With Korean pharmaceutical, biotech, medical device and cosmetics companies pushing further into overseas markets, he said local support infrastructure needs to widen in step with those market shifts.
The institute left open the possibility of restructuring its Central Asian operations centered on Kazakhstan. "In the case of Kazakhstan, it is true that we are currently seeing a number of limitations," Ko said. "Nothing has been decided yet, but we are weighing various options — whether to integrate it with the European market, relocate it, or run both." Conditions for operating the existing hub have changed because of shifts in the external environment, including the war in Ukraine, he said.
Alongside support for overseas expansion, Ko identified broader use of medical data as a key task. Connecting AI and digital health technologies to actual research and industry, he said, requires an institutional foundation that allows medical data to be used more widely. "There have long been concerns raised about data," Ko said, stressing the need for regulatory improvement.
He proposed the two-track system in particular as a way to address privacy protection and industrial use together. The idea is to run two approaches in parallel: using data processed so that individuals cannot be identified, and using data with the consent of the data subject.
Ko said the National Integrated Bio Big Data project, in which KHIDI participates, could also see wider use in research and industry if its scope of use were broadened on the basis of consent. He stressed that rather than data remaining at a single institution, links and cooperation among related institutions should be strengthened. "We need to move beyond a specific institution monopolizing data and build a cooperative framework," Ko said. "We have to create a system in which data can be used well and made open."
