[Interview] Korea to lead the International Hospital Federation with an agenda on AI, climate and inclusion

GENEVA, Switzerland -- By Kim Ji-hye / Korea Biomedical Review correspondent -- Over four days at the World Hospital Congress, Lee Wang-jun,  president-designate of the International Hospital Federation (IHF), kept returning to the same point: a century after the IHF was founded, medicine is again at a hinge moment, and the body that represents some 30,000 hospitals should act like it. 

“If the federation is just a name on a letterhead with one annual event, members will see us as a dues collector, not a partner,” he said in an interview with Korea Biomedical Review here. “We have to be more active and more responsive, so the work actually helps hospitals.”

Lee, a physician and chairman of Myongji Medical Foundation in Korea, was elected president-designate of the IHF on Nov. 10 at the federation’s gathering in Geneva.

His two-year term will run from 2027 to 2029, placing him at the helm for the organization’s centennial in 2029. 

The selection gives Asia its second IHF president in nearly a century -- and its second from Korea -- at a time when the federation is trying to widen membership beyond its European roots and make room for rapidly growing systems across Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

He insisted the election was less a personal victory than a recognition of Korea’s health system and its hospital community. “This is international acknowledgment of what Korea’s hospitals have contributed,” he said. It was also, he argued, a vote for a more inclusive federation. 

He campaigned on expanding participation from roughly 75 member entities to as many as 150, with targeted support for small nations and lower-income systems. That would require new fundraising and a more deliberate “bridge” between well-resourced members and those still building basic capacity.

The choice lands as the IHF prepares to bring next year’s congress to Seoul, only the third time the event will take place in Asia in its 49 editions (Seoul hosted in 2007 and Taiwan in 2016). Organizers expect the 2026 meeting to draw a surge of regional delegates who have often been priced out or sidelined by travel distance. 

For Lee, who has spent 15 years representing Korea within the federation, first as a board member and now as president-designate, Seoul is both a homecoming and a test. “People are expecting the biggest turnout ever,” he said. “The region has grown fast. The congress should reflect that.”

In Geneva, the week’s hallway polls and plenary sessions crystallized what many leaders already felt: artificial intelligence has moved from curiosity to a top-line agenda. “About half of respondents said AI is the biggest issue right now,” Lee said. 

He did not treat technology as a cure-all. Korea, he noted, has been slow to scale clinical AI because of strict data rules and limited economic incentives -- a gap he said would require policy work by national authorities and hospital associations, not just enthusiasm from technologists.

The IHF, in his view, should provide something more practical than speeches: shared platforms, peer examples that survive audit, and guidance on governance, safety and training.

That approach fits with the federation’s recent push to professionalize. Staff has grown from fewer than 10 to several dozen, the Geneva Sustainability Centre was launched to translate climate targets into hospital practice, and formal collaboration with the World Health Organization has deepened. 

Lee said the centennial agenda the board outlined this month rests on four pillars, including digital transformation and workforce education. His promise is not to rewrite that plan but to assign weight and follow-through.

“In a member-driven federation, the job is to execute a shared agenda rather than impose a personal one,” he said. “This is not a place for a lone-wolf, private-company style; you work within what members have agreed and then deliver.”

His own story is unusually hands-on for a global association chief. Trained at Seoul National University, he made his name as a turnaround operator who bought a failed hospital during the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis and rebuilt it; later, as a national association coordinator, he helped organize responses during three infectious-disease waves: H1N1 in 2009, MERS in 2015 and Covid-19 in 2020. 

That résumé, praised by backers as proof he can translate policy into operations, has also shaped his vocabulary. He talks less about branding than about “platforms,” “audit trails,” “engagement” and “help that is tangible.”

The centennial focus gives his tenure unusual stakes. The IHF was formed in the late 1920s, as the modern hospital -- defined by imaging suites, laboratories and operating theaters -- took shape after the shocks of world war and depression. 

Lee thinks the next design is arriving now. Precision medicine, data-driven operations and AI-assisted care will not simply add to the old model, he argued; they will change what hospitals are asked to do and how they prove they did it safely. “Legacy alone won’t solve this,” he said. “Success depends on who navigates the shift more innovatively.”

He is not blind to politics. Growing membership is partly arithmetic and partly diplomacy: widening fee structures, scholarships or day-pass access so nonmembers can test the value; erecting guardrails so sponsors cannot influence board decisions; publishing basic environmental and interoperability expectations that even small hospitals can meet. 

Korea’s arc is central to how he frames the job. He likes to point out that his country is, by his count, the only one to move in six decades from official development assistance (ODA) recipient to donor while climbing from developing to advanced-economy status. 

That “rapid progression,” as he calls it, offers lessons in how to compress timelines. But he is careful not to sell it as a template. “Rich or poor, everyone now faces the same shock of digital transformation,” he said. “The question is who can build the policies and institutions to handle it.”

Seoul in 2026 will serve as a progress check. If Lee has his way, delegates will encounter fewer proclamations and more usable models: climate playbooks tested on real campuses; documentation standards for clinical AI that survive legal scrutiny; training exchanges that send nurses, technicians and managers as readily as surgeons. 

Two years later, he will chair the IHF’s 100th-anniversary events, where members will be asked to say, aloud, what the next era of the hospital is for.

He is not promising a revolution by personality. He is promising work. “Members have to feel that what we do together changes how their hospitals run,” he said, rising to make his next meeting in a hallway crowded with delegates. “Otherwise, it’s just talk.”