Daewoong Pharmaceutical, next-generation food digital healthcare growing rapidly
Publication date: 2024-11-14 16:00 Updated: 2024-11-14 14:17
Cradle for charging CART BP pro and products
Daewoong Pharmaceutical is achieving results in the ‘digital healthcare’ sector, the next-generation business announced in its New Year’s address early this year.
On the 14th, Daewoong Pharmaceutical announced that Skylabs’ world’s first ring-shaped continuous blood pressure monitor, ‘Cart BP Pro’, which has been on sale since September of this year, has surpassed 800 hospitals and clinics in the second month of sales. This is a fairly fast rate of spread.
Cart BP Pro was officially launched at the end of August after receiving health insurance coverage recognition from the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service (hereinafter referred to as HIRA). Daewoong Pharmaceutical signed a distribution rights contract for Cart BP with developer Skylabs last June.
Card BP Pro is a ring-shaped product that complements the shortcomings of the existing cuff-type continuous blood pressure meter (APBM), such as sleep disorders and behavioral restrictions. When a patient with high blood pressure receives a Cart BP from a hospital or clinic and puts it on their finger, 24-hour blood pressure fluctuation records are automatically transmitted to the medical staff at the hospital or clinic. There are 12 million patients with high blood pressure in Korea, and the insurance premium for prescriptions at hospitals and clinics ranges from 15,000 to 18,000 won per day, of which the patient’s burden is around 5,000 to 9,000 won.
Last August, Daewoong Pharmaceutical also signed a domestic distribution contract with Arc for ‘Whiskey’, an artificial intelligence (AI) blindness disease diagnosis assistance solution, and fundus camera ‘Optina Genesis (hereinafter referred to as Optina)’. Within three months of sales, Optina and whiskey were introduced to about 300 hospitals and clinics across the country. The cumulative number of patients who underwent AI-based fundus examination using whiskey exceeded 20,000.
Whiskey is a blindness disease diagnosis platform that uses AI. It analyzes and provides opinions on the three major diseases that cause blindness: diabetic retinopathy, macular degeneration, and glaucoma. When images taken with a fundus camera are linked to the Whiskey program, an AI algorithm analyzes the images and diagnoses the disease. Optina is a special camera designed to photograph the fundus. It is used to diagnose and manage various eye diseases by taking high-resolution images of the internal structures of the eye, including the retina, choroid, and optic nerve. The three major blindness diseases can be detected and managed early at internal medicine, family medicine, and checkup centers.
Attached wearable electrocardiogram test device ‘mobiCARE’
The number of tests for ‘MobiCare’, an AI electrocardiogram (ECG) wearable device launched in 2020, exceeded 20,000 per month as of October this year. Mobicare has surpassed 70% of the electrocardiogram testing market share.
MobiCare enables early detection of even intermittently occurring cardiac abnormalities through long-term monitoring. Unlike existing atrial fibrillation testing devices with multiple electric wires, a single wearable device attached to the chest can continuously measure vital signs such as electrocardiogram, heart rate, heart rate variation, respiration, body temperature, and activity level required for arrhythmia diagnosis. The device is small and light, weighing about 19g. It is easy to attach and detach, so it does not interfere with daily life such as showering or exercising, so the convenience for the examinee is very high.
Earlier this year, Lee Chang-jae, CEO of Daewoong Pharmaceutical, said that we are facing a digital healthcare innovation that can manage everything from disease diagnosis to treatment, and health maintenance and promotion in an all-in-one way. In addition to the existing lineup of digital healthcare, the industry’s best wearable devices, electronic medicine, and digital products are available. He emphasized that he would strive to build a treatment pipeline. The management policy emphasized in the New Year’s address was realized throughout the year.
A Daewoong Pharmaceutical official said, “We have built sales and marketing know-how in the wearable device field by introducing the continuous blood sugar monitor ‘Freestyle Libre’, and we have achieved this by adding our sales and marketing experience with ‘Lixiana,’ which has the largest market share in the arrhythmia treatment market. “We were able to achieve this,” he said. “We will continue to focus on increasing accessibility to customer health monitoring and improving the quality of medical services by combining wearable devices and pharmaceuticals.”
Daewoong Pharmaceutical Digital Wearable Healthcare Device Collaboration Pipeline – Daewoong Pharmaceutical Digital Wearable Healthcare Device Collaboration Pipeline
Reporter Song Hye-young hybrid@etnews.com
