Korea turns to Nordics, Novo Nordisk to cross biotech ‘valley of death’

Korea is tired of watching biohealth breakthroughs stall in the lab. With four out of five high-risk R&D projects failing to cross the finish line, the country is looking outward -- toward Nordic biotech hubs and global pharma giants -- to bridge what officials call the “valley of death”: the critical gap between discovery and commercialization.

“There is no failure -- this is the only path to success,” said Sung Chang-mo, director of the PM Center of Korea’s K-Health MIRAE Initiative at the Korea Health Industry Development Institute (KHIDI), speaking Wednesday at Nordic+Korea Innovation Days in Seoul.

That philosophy, he said, underpins Korea’s Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H)-inspired program, launched in 2024 to fund mission-driven R&D projects designed to solve some of the country’s toughest healthcare challenges.

Unlike conventional efforts that prize publication, Korea’s version of ARPA-H is unapologetically high-risk. “We’re not chasing publications or patents,” Sung said. “We’re solving problems and issues for Korean society.”

Ten projects are already live, ranging from AI-driven ICU triage to microphysiological immune simulation. Each is backed by roughly $16 million over 4.5 years and assigned to one of nine handpicked project managers, he noted. Ten more projects are set to launch this year.

“The success rate is only 15 to 20 percent,” Sung acknowledged. “But that’s by design.” The old model, he said, delivered 60 to 70 percent success on paper -- “with publications and patterns” -- but lacked impact. The new model, he said, aims higher.

But Sung noted that government funding alone won’t close the commercialization gap. With Korea’s bio-health R&D budget sitting at just $1.5 billion annually -- “only one-twentieth the scale of the U.S.,” as he put it—he pitched a bold next step: “I would like to suggest international collaboration with the Nordic countries.”

His proposal includes a Korea-Nordic Biohealth Innovation Fund to co-finance preclinical and clinical-stage projects, a bilateral regulatory sandbox to test technologies like digital biomarkers, and cross-border translational research hubs. “Everyone talks about regulatory alignment,” he said. “Let’s actually test it.” The model, he emphasized, must be built around risk-sharing and long-term funding, not one-off pilots.

Korea’s pitch landed as Novo Nordisk, Denmark’s pharma giant, and Kakao Healthcare unveiled what that kind of collaboration can look like in practice.

At the center is PASTA, Kakao's AI-powered mobile health platform that merges real-time CGM data, behavioral inputs, and insulin dosing tracked through Novo’s Mallya device to deliver tailored prompts to patients and live dashboards to physicians.

"The real innovation isn’t collecting data,” said Julie Broe Honore, senior director of clinical development, medical and regulatory affairs at Novo Nordisk Pharma Korea. “It’s what happens after. We’re making that data actionable.”

Kakao Healthcare didn’t set out to build just another dashboard, CEO Hwang Hee said. The goal was to rewire the chronic care model itself. “The right role of Kakao Healthcare is to contribute to the areas of precare,” he said. “So we decided to begin our business and service from chronic disease, specifically diabetes.”

That work started with Mallya. “PASTA is the first platform to integrate Mallya in an automatic way,” Hwang said. “All users can upload their insulin data, which then syncs with hospital systems in real-time.” Physicians, he added, no longer have to guess based on quarterly lab values. “Now they see not just the numbers but what the patient actually did -- how much insulin they used, when, and what they ate.”

On the patient side, PASTA transforms a flood of data into daily action. “When patients see 200 blood sugar values a day, they don’t know what to do,” Hwang said. “So we built an AI agent to interpret the data and deliver nudges -- what to eat, when to inject, how to adjust.”

The platform now supports over 250,000 Korean users and is live in more than 330 hospitals. Japan is next, with Kakao targeting a full launch in October, Hwang revealed during the event.

Honore, for her part, sees PASTA as proof that digital health only works when it’s embedded into care, not simply added on. “One of the biggest challenges across the industry is the lack of integration,” she said. “To succeed, digital tools need to serve as a single point of access for patients and support the entire healthcare system, not just the treatment itself.”

Next on Novo’s agenda is DoseCheck, a titration assistant slated for launch in Korea, Honore said. Meanwhile, Kakao is branching into obesity care with Phenoet, its own weight management service, which launched earlier this month and already counts 70,000 users, according to Hwang.

But the bigger challenge, Honore said, is data fragmentation. “Across pharma, we focus digital tools around treatment,” she said. “But the challenge is integration.”

To succeed, she argued, tools have to be embedded -- “one-stop for the patient” -- and serve both doctors and the health system. “Digital health only has value if it delivers outcomes,” she said.