Gwangju City, Joint Planning of Projects in the Artificial Intelligence Healthcare Sector

Selected for the 'Super-Regional Cooperation Project Discovery Support Program'... Busan City and Gyeonggi-do Participate

[Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Park Seon-gang] Gwangju Metropolitan City (Mayor Lee Yong-seop) is jointly planning a project in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) healthcare in cooperation with metropolitan local governments.

On the 11th, Gwangju City announced that its project, "Establishment of a Hyperconnected AI Healthcare Service Platform," was selected in the "Hyperregional Cooperation Project Discovery Support Project" hosted by the Presidential Committee on Balanced National Development.

A total of 53 projects nationwide applied for this contest, and after three rounds of evaluation including document and presentation reviews, 13 projects were finally selected.

Each project will receive 50 million KRW in research planning costs fully funded by the national government.

The "Establishment of a Hyperconnected AI Healthcare Service Platform" project is led by Gwangju City, with participation from Busan City and Gyeonggi Province.

The project aims to create an AI-based healthcare service platform through hyperregional cooperation, providing a one-stop solution from data sharing, product development, to market entry, with the goal of fostering a world-class AI healthcare unicorn company.

Gwangju City plans to sign an agreement with the Korea Institute for Advancement of Technology (KIAT), under the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, which is the project executing agency, by the 21st of this month. The project planning will be finalized by May next year with the participation of Gwangju Jeonnam Research Institute, Gwangju Technopark, Busan Information Industry Promotion Agency, and Gyeonggi-do Economic Science Promotion Agency, which will oversee the overall project planning.

The project is promoted as a data hub linked with data infrastructure such as supercomputing and data centers through the AI industrial convergence complex project worth 180 billion KRW.

Busan City will serve as a demonstration hub linked to the AI healthcare smart city centered on the West Busan Smart Healthcare Cluster, leveraging its abundant medical industry infrastructure. Gyeonggi Province will promote the project as an R&D hub connecting bio and healthcare-related R&D companies, personnel, and startups by utilizing the successful model of Pangyo Techno Valley. This is a hyperregional cooperation project.

Son Kyung-jong, Director of the AI Industry Bureau of Gwangju City, said, "The healthcare industry is one of the region's key industries and is expected to have a high growth rate in domestic and international markets. After signing the project agreement, we will form a project planning committee to accelerate the creation of a world-class AI healthcare industry ecosystem."