CDTB Colloquium, "The digital therapeutics market is expanding – we should take interest in managing big data"

Dae-sung Kyung, the Executive Director of Hanmi Pharmaceutical

“CDTB Colloquium – Hamni Pharmaceutical,” hosted by KUBS (Dean=Bae, Johngseok) Center for Digital Transformation & Business (CDTB; Head=Dr. Baeho Kim and Dr. Byungcho Kim) was held on Friday, July 25, in SUPEX Hall. On this day, Executive Director Dae-sung Kyung of Hanmi Pharmaceutical was invited as the keynote speaker and gave a lecture on the topic “Digital Transformation in the Healthcare Industry.” The event was held both online and offline, strictly following COVID-10 guidelines.

Before starting the lecture, Executive Director Kyung explained the pharmaceutical industry in general. The size of the pharmaceutical industry in South Korea is about 21 trillion won, accounting for about 1.2% to 1.3% of the world pharmaceutical market. In the global pharmaceutical market, United States leads the industry by taking up to 40% of market shares, followed by Europe, China, and Japan. While analyzing the hiring trends in the South Korean pharmaceutical industry, Director Kyung mentioned that although he is a business major, the pharmaceutical sector is open to people from different academic backgrounds. In addition, he showed a positive outlook on the development of the pharmaceutical industry, stating that “Despite the fact that national R&D spending in this area is quite small (1.7 trillion won), its growth potential is increasing as we entered into the digital era.”

“The 4^th Industrial Revolution in the field of healthcare is actively taking place; pharmaceutical companies are going through digital transformation by merging with big data, mobile, IoT, and cloud,” Executive Director Kyung stated, “It is highly likely that the pharmaceutical industry will develop into a high value-added industry.” Unlike traditional therapeutics where patients are prescript with drugs, digital therapeutics utilize software such as applications and devices to treat patients. In fact, university hospitals use digital therapeutics to stimulate brain activities and learning processes. He further explained that traditional and digital therapeutics will develop to complement each other and that the implementation of AI technology will reduce the time it takes to develop pharmaceuticals by 70% and the cost it takes by half.

In the second part of the lecture, “Global Trends and Implications,” Executive Director Kyung dealt with the concept of medical data. He emphasized the importance of medical data in establishing welfare policies, stating that “data” is the key to digital transformation. He mentioned that South Korea has advantages in collecting medical data due to national health insurance, and that such data can be used to analyze prescription patterns and social costs. Since this process requires the ability to effectively utilize different kinds of data, he encouraged the students to enter the pharmaceutical industry, stating that “You have the skill to combine data sets.”

The last part of the lecture consisted of a Q&A session, where students asked questions such as “How to utilize data in the field of Korean Medicine” and “How to identify variables when government data from Health Insurance Review & Assessment Services is combined with private data.”

Meanwhile, KUBS has established CDTB in 2019 to act as a platform that connects education, research, and industry, while leading digital transformation in the field of education and research. CDTB has been hosting many special lectures since then.

Article | Seonwoo Yoon (School of Media & Communication ’18)

Photo | Serim Shin (College of Political Science & Economics, Department of Economics ’18)