Two digital healthcare startups -- Dr. Diary and Lemon Healthcare -- have been selected as final partners for the fourth HealthX Challenge Seoul, a competition co-organized by Novartis Korea, the Seoul Metropolitan Government, and Seoul BioHub.
The three co-organizers held the fourth HealthX Challenge Seoul award ceremony last Friday and announced their final selected partners.
The HealthX Challenge Seoul is an open innovation program as part of the HealthX World Series, Novartis Korea’s innovation competition in bio-digital healthcare, to develop and advance solutions to address unmet needs in healthcare.
The project competition was open to startups and prospective founders for about a month from May to June under the theme of “Patient-centered comprehensive healthcare” and was divided into two categories -- patient and medical staff connection solution and chronic disease management solution.
Through the documentation and presentation screening process, the two companies, one in each category, were finally selected based on various criteria, including topic suitability, technological innovation, business feasibility, and impact.
Lemon Healthcare, selected as the final partner in the patient and medical staff connection solution category, won recognition for its integrated service that enables mobile processing from appointment to consultation, payment, and insurance claims.
In the chronic disease management solution category, Dr. Diary was selected to partner with Novartis Korea for its data-driven diabetes prevention, weight management, and other customized solutions for chronic patients through health record monitoring.
The two finalists will receive a research grant of 40 million won ($29,850) each and a two-year residency at the Seoul Biohub. In addition, Novartis Korea will provide expert mentoring and coaching, global networking, and various other programs to help the companies advance their solutions and expand their global reach.
"We are grateful to the participating companies for actively proposing ideas to build and develop patient-centered digital healthcare services," said Kim Won-pil, Head of Business Excellence & Innovation at Novartis Korea. "We will spare no effort to support the selected innovators to strengthen their competitiveness in the bio-digital healthcare sector and contribute substantially to addressing unmet medical needs."
Kim Hyun-woo, Director of Seoul Biohub, said "As patient-centered medical care is in full swing, we are accelerating patient-customized healthcare across the lifecycle beyond simple disease treatment. We hope the HealthX Challenge program will serve as an opportunity to draw more attention to the growth and development of comprehensive medical services using medical big data and information systems."