Promoting AI-based New Drug Development
The Korean government is planning to invest a total of 2.8 trillion won (US$2.5 billion) from 2020 to 2029 to build a smart integrated medical device development support system. In addition, it has decided to shorten the approval and authorization period for new drug development for innovative pharmaceutical companies.
The Ministry of Health and Welfare announced on Dec. 10 its Fourth Industrial Revolution-based healthcare development strategy, which includes such plans above. The key tasks of this strategy are to operate a production and management trial system of healthcare big data, develop new drugs using artificial intelligence, build a smart clinical test system, develop smart integrated medical devices, and create an innovated healthcare industry ecosystem.
Under the strategy, the government will promote the Healthcare Big Data Showcase project from next year to 2021. The project will be carried out by recruiting 300 people, including persons with no special health problems, cancer survivors and subjects of lifestyle improvement, and then analyzing the health, medical, and genome data during the next year. Based on the collected data, a standardization for integrated data transmission management technology will be created in 2020. In 2021, a full-fledged technology and service development and research will be conducted using these achievements.
During the same period, another project called “AI Drug Development Platform Development” will also be carried out. It is a project aimed at shortening the development period of new drugs by using AI to identify new drug candidates, carry out pre-clinical tests, and intellectualize the drug monitoring system. The government also plans to improve the system by stage of clinical trials.
In addition, a full-period support system for the development of smart integrated medical devices will be established. In order to broaden the market for domestic integrated medical devices, the government plans to introduce a research and development (R&D) program for purchase, reflecting the demand for hospitals. In order to reflect the potential value of innovative medical technology, a pilot separate evaluation system for the new medical technology evaluation system will also be operated.