Daewoong vows to expand AI health monitoring for all

Daewoong Pharmaceutical on Monday laid out plans to accelerate the implementation of an artificial intelligence-based monitoring system that can help medical staff better protect patients around the clock in Korea.

The Korean drugmaker highlighted the launch of the all-new thynC, an ungraded version of an AI-based smart hospital bed monitoring system, which has become an integrated AI health care platform capable of handling different patient data sets in one place, in addition to its 24-hour health monitoring technologies.

“The vision, which we promised last year at this very place to realize, of ‘faster, closer and smarter’ has actually taken shape in the clinical sites,” said Park Hyung-chul, head of Daewoong Pharmaceutical’s Ethical Drugs, or ETC, Marketing Division, in a press conference at the JW Marriott Hotel Dongdaemun in Seoul.

“Going beyond its introductory phase, digital health care has become an essential technology for companies, medical staff and patients to win, win and win.”

Daewoong Pharmaceutical teamed up with Seers Technology to become Korea’s exclusive distributor of thynC, which was developed by the latter and commercialized in February 2024. Daewoong is a strategic investor of Seers Technology that went public on Korea’s secondary tech-heavy bourse Kosdaq in June 2024.

According to Daewoong Pharmaceutical, thynC was installed on approximately 15,000 hospital beds at 162 hospitals nationwide as of Feb. 9 this year. The company said it plans to expand that to 100,000 beds by the end of this year.

Daewoong Pharmaceutical’s digital health care business sector, which logged 50.9 billion won in sales last year, up 123 percent from 2024, also set the goal of reaching 300 billion won in yearly revenue.

The all-new thynC has added three extra functions from three different companies: SkyLab’s ring-type device that can track a patient’s blood pressure, iKooB’s glucose monitoring system and Puzzle AI’s voice-recognition automated note-taking solution that can log medical information spoken by doctors and nurses.

The original version of thynC, which included a number of wearable biosensors such as a watch, can monitor a patient’s vital signs -- electrocardiogram, oxygen saturation, heart rate, respiration rate and body temperature -- and notify medical staff through an alarm in case of an anomaly.

“Our ultimate vision is to set up a 24-hour health monitoring system that extends to households, so even after patients are discharged from a hospital, they can continuously have their health conditions checked,” said Park.