Leading a transformation in global healthcare

Since the turn of the century, researchers and clinicians have been eagerly anticipating the next fundamental shift in medicine, one driven by vast volumes of patient and disease data being collected globally. This big-data revolution could result in hugely improved patient outcomes through the tailoring of treatments to individuals.

Yet universal personalized medicine has been slow to arrive due to the many technologies and supporting systems needed to make it a reality. Only in recent years has secure data connectivity matured to a level that makes it possible to effectively link vast databases of different data types.

The revolution is now closer than ever, but two important pieces of the personalized medicine puzzle still need to be placed: unlocking data and initiating transdisciplinary collaborations, as president and CEO of Seoul National University Hospital (SNUH) Young Tae Kim points out.

“We have an incredible wealth of data: imaging data, genomics, many different types of diagnostic and treatment data, patient histories and demographics, and even financial data,” says Young Tae Kim. “But we now need to extract the value of that data through collaborations and new technologies. In particular, we need to enable international cross-linking that will unlock the benefits of personalized medicine for the world by updating rigid regulations around data sharing.”

Patients first

SNUH is South Korea’s largest hospital network as well as the country’s oldest hospital and academic institution. True to its academic foundations, SNUH’s faculty feel inspired to lead the nation’s healthcare transformation for a better patient experience and improved treatments.

The first hospital in South Korea to introduce an electronic medical-record system, SNUH boasts its own high-performance supercomputer centre and it is spearheading policy change with government to improve how data is used.

SNUH has recently been designated a National Strategic Technology Research Institute (NSTRI) by the South Korean government, and is now positioned to lead the national healthcare transformation. “This designation has provided an injection of funding and a renewed impetus to align our network of university hospitals and research campuses towards this goal,” says Young Tae Kim. “Keeping the patient experience foremost in mind, we’re actively nurturing many projects. We are also strengthening the collaboration and integration of our researchers and clinicians to accelerate the transition to universal personalized and preventative medicine.”

Expertise convergence

Future medicine will be the culmination of a multitude of innovations driven by data of many different types from an expanding spectrum of technologies, and it is only made possible by bringing together expertise from many different academic, technological and clinical fields.

This will not happen by accident and must be engineered through the creation of time and space for collaboration and the incubation of ideas. This is the transdisciplinary concept behind SNUH’s Institute of Convergence Medicine with Innovative Technology (ICMIT).

“Historically, it’s been difficult to bring clinical doctors together with researchers in a fruitful way to undertake innovation projects,” says ICMIT Director Kyung Hwan Kim. He attributes clinicians’ devotion and responsibility to patients for the limited time they can devote to research.

“As a designated specialized research institute, we can change that, with clinicians’ time spent on research now recognized as part of the job, not just an add-on,” says Kyung Hwan Kim. “ICMIT can bring together expertise and initiate projects based on clinical need. We’re like a medical clinic but for innovation projects, where clinicians see researchers instead of patients.”

Clinicians at SNUH hold concurrent appointments at the hospital and the university, creating an integrated environment in which researchers and clinicians alike can immerse themselves in translating ideas and research into practice. It provides a rare opportunity to work as a researcher inside a working hospital.

“Transdisciplinary research has the potential to uncover totally unexpected findings,” says Kyung Hwan Kim. “This is the type of mindset we foster at ICMIT, a can-do attitude where we can think in novel ways to make a practical impact through translational research.”

Daily practice

Adjacent to SNUH’s main hospital is the Biomedical Research Institute (BRI), the central hub for SNUH’s research activities. Shifting from its traditional focus on research primarily for academic outcomes, the BRI as a newly designated research institute is prioritizing translational research and international collaboration.

BRI is initiating innovative, practice-oriented research with the aim of driving the shift to future precision medicine.

“On the one hand, we have a strong emphasis on digital health from the government and artificial intelligence, which will play a vital role in analysing our incredible datasets,” says BRI Director Yong-Jin Kim. “On the other hand, we have tangible, practice-led innovations, such as T-cell therapies, bioprinting and genomic analysis technologies. These will accelerate the development of safe and effective treatments.”

BRI has its own cell-production facility that is good-manufacturing-practice compliant, and a biobank of more than 1.5 million liquid samples. It is also the hub of South Korea’s network of undiagnosed diseases, which is linked to its children’s hospital the largest and oldest in the nation.” With significant funding now flowing from the government for future medicine projects, BRI is repositioning itself as a go-to collaborator and a world-class institute for the most innovative biomedical research and development in a global context.

“We’re on the verge of many new collaborations with the likes of Harvard, Stanford and MIT, and we’ve established a strong international collaborative research system with a robust funding pipeline. At the same time, we’re working with the government to update its data regulations so that the uniquely comprehensive dataset that we have in South Korea can become part of the global future medicine transformation,” says Yong-Jin Kim.

“We’re extending an open invitation to researchers and clinicians from around the world to join us in this very exciting phase of medical innovation,” he adds.