With the importance of personalized healthcare being emphasized more than ever with the emergence of innovative new drugs, Roche Diagnostics Korea is aiming to lead the market by focusing on digital solutions.

The company plans to lead the healthcare sector through digital transformation in line with the paradigm shift in treatment, from early diagnosis and precision medicine to predictive medicine.


On the 5th, Roche Diagnostics Korea held a press conference on the theme of “Future Healthcare and Innovation Presented by Diagnostic Tests” and emphasized the importance and opportunities of digital transformation in the healthcare sector.

With the launch of the Digital Insights division, the company has been focusing on providing data-driven insights and marking a new turning point in personalized medicine.

“Digital transformation in healthcare is the new normal, and we have already entered the era of artificial intelligence (AI) transformation beyond digital transformation,” said Muhwan Yun, head of Digital Insights at Roche Diagnostics Korea. ”Roche Diagnostics has set its own ethical standards for applying AI to healthcare, and is aiming to expand and innovate its digital portfolio, including continuous R&D investment and collaboration.”

One representative project is Smart Lab, a digital transformation of diagnostic laboratories. The goal is to make existing laboratory operations more efficient, flexible, and data secure, to ultimately increase insight from analyzing data.

For this, Roche Diagnostics has been emphasizing 'digital solutions' and building an enabling ecosystem.

It focuses on incorporating significant data of a certain scale, advanced analytics, and digital technologies to support medical decisions and improve the treatment experience.

The company’s representative technology, NAVIFY, is a cloud-based data platform that analyzes vast amounts of healthcare data in a standardized format to enable precision medicine.

“In practice, we have seen significant improvements in time, manpower, and cost metrics for testing and analysis after implementing Roche Diagnostics Digital Insight Solution’s NAVIFY portfolio,” said Yun, ”and the satisfaction rate among healthcare providers who have used them is over 90%.”

“With South Korea set to enter a super-aged society next year, the role of diagnostic test data for efficient and effective treatment is expected to increase further,” said Kit Tang, General Manager of Roche Diagnostics Korea. ”Roche Diagnostics Korea will continue to strive to contribute to an efficient healthcare system and improved patient outcomes with innovative diagnostic solutions covering a wide range of disease areas.”

The hurdle to building a digital ecosystem for diagnostic tests is in the “maturity” of the digital transformation

In the long run, digital transformation in diagnostics is essential, but there are hurdles.

Not only are institutional improvements required for the digital transformation of the existing system, but the nature of healthcare is such that it is important to integrate the different perspectives of each stakeholder, including hospitals, manufacturers, patients, and academic societies.

In response to this, Yeo-Min Yun, Director of Scientific Affairs at KSLM of the Korean Society for Laboratory Medicine (Konkuk University Hospital), emphasized that the emergence of technology should be supported by measures that can encourage their use in practice, such as by assigning service fees.

“If you look at imaging, the technology that analyzes the images through AI technology is being applied and utilized to create values that have never existed before,” said Director Yun. ”Referring to this precedent, I think that efforts should be made to apply a service fee for such diagnostic tests and recognize their value in clinical practice.”

Ultimately, Roche Diagnostics' challenge is to collect and utilize fragmented data. To this end, the company expects the newly launched division to serve as a base to build the ecosystem.

“In Korea, data compatibility is relatively poor, so we are striving to collect and utilize data well,” said Director Yun, adding, ”As the implementation of digital ecosystems is not fully mature yet, it will be important for each component, including the company, to be integrated.”