Yeol Kim

Graduate School of Cancer Science and Policy, National Cancer Center, Republic of Korea

Big data is an emerging issue and a new application not only in industry and market, but also in biotechnology, genomics, and disease prevention. South Korea has been a world leader in information technology (IT). Based on the IT infrastructure and advanced technology, Korea made an effort in advance to engage big data in the fourth industrial revolution with using artificial intelligence (AI) technology. Also based on the infrastructure of National Health Insurance System (NHIS), big data application has been developing fast in enhancing disease treatment technology and in health service delivery.

In 2011, the President’s Council on National Information Communication Technology (ICT) Strategies in Korea, launched a big data task-force under the Big Data Initiative. This initiative aimed to establish a pan-governmental big data network & analysis systems, data convergence between government and private sector, to develop a new diagnosis system using from public big data, and to promote big data management & analytical technologies. The initiative also included public and private collaboration for enhancing Big Data using. Along with the initiative, the Korean Bio-Information Center (KOBIC) planned to operate the National DNA Management System which can provide customized diagnosis and treatment for patients by integrating big data of various medical patient information. The Clinical and Omics Data Archive (CODA) was established in 2016 as a national biomedical research data repository for supporting research on bio-science and health based on the National Biomedical Research Resource Management Act. The main goal of CODA is collecting, organizing and preserving omics data from clinical research funded by the national R&D studies. The collected data resources are in the public domain and provided freely for researchers to promote health-related studies on precision medicine or personalized prevention. Korean National Cancer Center also opened a big data center and started to build big data for supporting cancer research by connecting public cancer hospitals data, NHIS data and central cancer registry data.

Recently, a pilot project supported by Korean government started to collect genetic and biometric data of ten million patients in one big database to support research purposes on health care. The project goal is not only to improve pharmacological research and development of novel treatment strategies, but also to predict and identify a serious disease occurrence in an early stage. Additionally, this project is a part of establishing fully digitalized national health system.

Korean government declared to create 35,000 jobs in the health service and medical research sector and to increase global market share up to 4% by 2022 through supporting big data research and infrastructure.