Digital Healthcare in the Fast Lane
Naver is planning to open an in-house hospital next month. According to the company, the hospital will be a paperless hospital and a test bed for its healthcare business expansion. The company is also planning to acquire 10 percent of ezCaretech by investing 30 billion won. ezCaretech provides electronic medical record services on a cloud computing basis.
This year, the digital healthcare market is expected to show a substantial growth along with the cloud computing market. The two sectors are closely linked in that data utilization is of very high importance.
According to market research firms, the global cloud healthcare market is expected to reach US$15.1 billion in 2023. Last year, Oracle acquired Cerner in order to enter the electronic medical record market. The former invested US$28.3 billion to that end, the biggest investment in its M&A history.
In April last year, Microsoft acquired Nuance for US$19.7 billion. Nuance has various solutions for medical personnel voice recognition and medical record automation. Microsoft is planning to expand its healthcare business by combining the solutions with Azure.
Amazon is currently providing Amazon Care as a telemedicine service based on Amazon Web Services. Google is working with HCA Healthcare so that patient records can be shared on Google Cloud and algorithms for medical personnel can be developed.