이 기사는 2022년 04월 15일 08:04 thebell 에 표출된 기사입니다.

South Korea’s leading mobile carrier KT Corp plans to establish a medical corporation and launch a pilot telemedicine platform in Vietnam later this year as it aims to expand its digital bio health business to Southeast Asia.

The company said on Wednesday that it signed an agreement with Hanoi Medical University in Vietnam to offer pilot telemedicine services for chronically-ill patients. They agreed to develop chronic disease management services, jointly research artificial intelligence (AI) technology in the medical sector and train medical staff there.

KT will also launch a pilot telemedicine platform service in Vietnam by the end of this year. To do so, the mobile carrier plans to establish a medical corporation there within this year.

“We are preparing to sign a separate agreement by forming an advisory group with the most prestigious medical staff in Korea and we plan to train medical staff to be hired by the new local medical corporation,” said Ko Hun-seok, a project manager at KT's digital and bio health business department.

Since the pandemic broke out, telemedicine is becoming more common around the world, with one in six patients in the U.S. using telemedicine services. KT turned to overseas telemedicine markets as telemedicine services are prohibited in Korea.

The mobile carrier has chosen Vietnam as its first target as the country is the fifth fastest-ageing country in the world. While the social and economic burden will increase in the future, the country is still insufficient to meet its telemedicine infrastructure needs.

KT expects its business to settle down in the next two to three years and plans to expand the business to other Southeast Asian countries.

Digital transformation effort

In 2020, KT newly established the digital and bio health organization, within the future value promotion office to strengthen its digital healthcare business. At the end of last year, the organization was escalated to the digital and bio health business department.

KT is focusing on eight new growth engines as part of its move to transform into a digital platform company. The businesses include commerce, content, finance, real estate, AI, robot, healthcare and cloud.

For the commerce business, KT launched KT Alpha last year through a merger of KTH and KT Mhows. For the content business, the mobile carrier established KT Studio Genie and put related affiliates under the media unit.

KT completed vertical integration of BC Card and K bank for its finance business. It is also preparing to list K bank on the stock market as part of its efforts to improve a corporate value. KT Estate is operating the real estate business.

KT plans to dominate the service robot ecosystem, starting with the AI quarantine robot. The mobile carrier separated its cloud and internet data center business earlier this month and created KT Cloud.

The company plans to develop the healthcare business to create synergies with AI, big data and cloud businesses. When the healthcare business achieves visible outcome, the company may carry out restructuring like it did with KT Cloud. (Reporting by Jang-jun Lee)