The government said it would bring up medical scientists specializing in AI and big data for clinical research and new drug development.
Bang Young-sik, director of the Healthcare Data Promotion Division at the Ministry of Health and Welfare, presented a blueprint for a health data-based industry at a forum hosted by the National Academy of Medicine of Korea on Wednesday.
Bang said the government could speed up its policy support for public health data thanks to the amendments to the so-called “three data privacy” laws and people’s changed perception. He said that the government would use the public’s support to secure competitiveness in health data and prepare for the future.
“If we consider that engineering colleges focused mainly on the bio healthcare field when developing AI, we can say that AI and medicine can be integrated,” Bang said. “Not only engineering colleges but medical schools have started educating how to handle AI.”
With collaboration with the Ministry of Education, the health and welfare ministry will push for an “AI graduate school” specializing in medicine and bio-health and support the convergence of medical and engineering colleges.
The health and welfare ministry also plans to apply big data and AI to broader clinical research, new drug development, and cosmetics.
In particular, hospitals will conduct various clinical trials using metaverse, based on the “Medical Twin” technology that replicates human body parts in virtual space with real user big data, Bang predicted.
From next year, the government plans to conduct trials based on real users’ data at hospitals and utilize virtual systems related to clinical trials such as Medical Twin and metaverse, he said.
“Good data makes good AI. If we establish how data is pre-processed and high-quality data standards, we will be able to apply it to various fields such as health insurance,” Bang said.
As big data and AI are related to social welfare and quality of life for the general public, government agencies also need to invest in the latest data protection technologies for data security, he added.
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Bang Young-sik (top left), director of the Healthcare Data Promotion Division at the Ministry of Health and Welfare, speaks on the government’s project to nurture AI-specializing medical scientists at a policy debate on Wednesday. (Credit: The National Academy of Medicine of Korea’s YouTube channel)