As global biopharma races ahead, Korea’s central bank bets on AI and national health data reboot

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The Bank of Korea has called for the creation of a state-approved bio data access system to unlock the country’s vast national health insurance and hospital records, arguing that AI could become a “game changer” for Korea’s underpowered biohealth industry.

In a report released Feb. 9 on strategies to foster the advanced biohealth sector, the central bank said the global biohealth market is projected to grow at an average annual rate of 5.0 percent over the next five years, nearly double the 2.7 percent growth rate expected for the automobile industry, one of Korea’s main export pillars.

Despite the strong outlook, Korea’s global market share in biohealth remains at just 3.6 percent. The report highlighted the scale gap facing domestic firms. Annual revenue at Samsung Biologics, the country’s largest bio company, stands at about $2.8 billion, roughly 5 percent of the $57.8 billion average revenue generated by the world’s top three pharmaceutical companies.

The central bank attributed the gap to weak competitiveness in original technologies. Between 2016 and 2023, Korean companies filed 4,800 biohealth patent applications in the United States, ranking ninth globally, behind Switzerland and China. A 2024 government survey found that Korea trails the United States by 3.6 years in pharmaceutical development and 2.8 years in medical device technology.

Sung Won, an economist at the Micro and Institutional Economic Studies Team at the Bank of Korea, said Korea’s biohealth sector has grown mainly in niche areas such as biosimilars and contract development and manufacturing, but lacks a robust innovation ecosystem in high-value novel drugs and advanced medical devices.

The report argued that AI could help close the gap. AI-driven drug development can shorten research timelines by 30 to 50 percent while lowering costs and creating new markets in precision medicine and surgical robotics.

Korea’s key advantage, the central bank said, lies in its health insurance and hospital clinical data covering 50 million citizens under a single-payer national health insurance system. The dataset, sometimes described as a “diamond of the AI era,” is considered globally rare due to its scale and integration.

Korea also ranks fourth worldwide in both U.S. AI patent filings and the number of AI-based medical devices approved by the U.S. FDA, underscoring its technological potential.

However, the report noted that bio data remain underutilized because the risks and costs of data sharing are borne by individuals and hospitals, while the benefits are distributed among companies, researchers and society at large. This incentive mismatch has discouraged active data use.

To address the issue, the Bank of Korea proposed establishing a “state-approved bio data access framework.” Under the system, only research projects that meet legally defined public-interest criteria would be granted access to data following prior review. Approved projects would receive regulatory easing, such as exemptions from prior consent requirements, along with support for data distribution.

The report also suggested creating an independent, specialized agency to oversee the system and support the private data ecosystem, citing European models as reference cases.