SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. -- By Lee Han-soo/Korea Biomedical Review correspondent –- Kakao Healthcare CEO Hwang Hee took the stage at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference (JPMHC) 2024 in San Francisco, Calif., on Tuesday, unveiling ambitious plans for PASTA, its new mobile-based blood sugar management service.

PASTA is a blood sugar management service utilizing continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) devices and smartphones.

The healthcare unit of Kakao, a Korean internet giant, developed the application in collaboration with global companies like Dexcom, Novo Nordisk, and i-SENS.

The service includes AI-based food recognition and nutrient analysis, real-time blood sugar measurement, real-time guidance, analytical reports, and a community feature for sharing blood sugar data among family and friends.

Kakao Healthcare will also be providing a separate system called "PASTA Connect" to medical institutions to facilitate patient treatment and education by integrating patient data with the hospital's electronic medical record system to support patient treatment continuously.

The company is set to launch the platform in Korea in February.

The JPMHC is the largest pharmaceutical and biotech investment event held annually in January in the U.S., attracting a large gathering of companies and investors from the healthcare sector.

This year, Kakao Healthcare was the digital healthcare company from Korea to be officially invited as a speaker to speak during the Asia Pacific & Latin America (APAC&LatAm) session.

CEO Hwang started the session by expressing concerns about the rising global diabetes population, which is expected to reach 642 million by 2030, with 39 percent potentially suffering from chronic diabetes-related complications.

"The economic burden of this could approach $2.3 trillion, almost 2 percent of the global GDP," Hwang said. "To help countries overcome such burden, PASTA aims to empower diabetic patients to manage their condition by analyzing real-time continuous blood sugar data and lifestyle habits, ultimately reducing the occurrence of serious complications."

Hwang stressed that the application is not just for diabetic patients; it can be used for pre-diabetic populations as well.

"The focus there would be on lifestyle improvements to delay the progression to diabetes," he said. "Also, medical institutions could use patient lifestyle data that is collected from PASTA to make a more precise treatment."

Kakao Healthcare to enter healthcare data business

During the session, CEO Hwang also introduced "Project Delta," an AI-based clinical data analysis and prediction technology targeting cooperative hospitals.

"As of 2020, there are approximately 231.4 billion terabytes of global healthcare data," he said. "With the data analysis market expected to reach $122 billion by 2030, Kakao Healthcare is collaborating with global companies like Google Cloud to meet the unmet needs in data management of partners such as hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, and research institutions."

Hwang stressed that Kakao Healthcare aims to standardize high-quality clinical data and diverse medical records held by medical institutions to build a data lake.

"This data lake would enable convenient use of AI and large-scale machine learning without concerns about data security and privacy breaches from data export," he said. "We expect that the diverse data-demanding organizations will be able to activate multi-institutional research and advance the pharmaceutical industry, improve medical quality, and innovate medical technology without exporting source data, using standardized data and federated learning for rapid data analysis."

Kakao Healthcare has already conducted a federated learning pilot test on mortality and complication prediction models for colorectal cancer patients with Google Cloud and three domestic universities, confirming that the federated learning model without data export does not underperform compared to traditional data analysis prediction models.

They are currently conducting additional pilot tests in the field of breast cancer with more hospitals.

The project has already made a few partnerships come to fruition, he added.

Kakao Healthcare officially launched a research alliance called "R-Alliance" using AI and big data technologies with major medical institutions such as Korea University Medical Center, Yonsei University Health Systems, Ewha Womans University Medical Center, Samsung Medical Center, Chonnam National University Hospital, and Chosun University Hospital in November of last year.

Kakao Healthcare has also signed an MOU with L'Oréal, a global cosmetic company, for the development of precision beauty solutions based on real-world evidence (RWE), planning to lead in the RWE-based data analysis field, especially in clinical trials in July of last year.

Kakao Healthcare to expand business globally

CEO Hwang also revealed his ambitions for overseas business.

He mentioned plans for the PASTA service to enter Japan within the year and in the U.S. by the end of next year and noted that discussions with partners for joint ventures in each region are progressing, with concrete overseas business plans expected to be revealed soon.

Additionally, Hwang added that Project Delta would lay the groundwork for using the results as a representative dataset for Asians in the global pharmaceutical and tech sectors.

During a separate talk with Korean reporters, Hwang expressed his satisfaction with the company's first JPMHC, noting that it was a significant opportunity for meaningful meetings with major investors and feedback on the company's current direction and achievements.

"I look forward to meaningful outcomes from the global business expansion following the conference invitation," Hwang said.