Korea’s Kakao Healthcare has signed a strategic partnership with Providence Health Care Ventures, a Canada-based healthcare platform company and startup accelerator, to co-develop an integrated data platform built around privacy tech and AI with an eye on North American expansion.

Under the deal, the companies will link Kakao Healthcare’s Haycorn data search portal and its Healthcare Data Research Suite with Providence’s Integrated Health Informatics Datalab to create a single environment for discovery and clinical research.

Kakao said the platform will use its privacy-enhancing technologies and an “Eyes off” approach that trains models on distributed data without moving sensitive records. It added that the system will follow global data-interoperability standards to make it easier to link datasets across borders.

Kakao Healthcare framed the collaboration as a bridge into Canada and the wider North American market, while the companies said the combined offering targets life-science and biopharma customers in both countries.