CES Innovation Awards Strengthen Digital Healthcare Section
From Digital Health Companies like Weisen and EverX
Also Awarded: SK Ecoplant, Ceragem, and Coway
Healthcare is emerging as a major sector at CES, which has traditionally been regarded as an exhibition for home appliances and IT. As the organizers increase their focus on digital healthcare, various domestic digital healthcare companies specializing in artificial intelligence (AI), digital therapeutics (DTx), and more are fiercely competing in technology by winning 'Innovation Awards' ahead of next year's CES.
The Consumer Technology Association (CTA), which organizes CES in the United States, awards the 'Innovation Awards' at the end of the previous year by pre-evaluating the entries before the CES event held every January. Reflecting the accelerating digital transformation trend in healthcare at CES 2023, the 'Digital Health' award category was introduced for the first time, and various digital healthcare companies were named among the winners of the CES 2024 Innovation Awards for next year.
This trend is considered to have started at CES 2022. Robert Ford, CEO of Abbott, a leader in continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) ? one of the frontiers of digital healthcare ? gave the keynote speech as the first healthcare company CEO to do so, and Abbott’s CGM product 'FreeStyle Libre' won the 'Best Innovation Award,' marking a turning point. At CES 2023, a digital health section was set up at the main venue, the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC), where various domestic companies such as SK Biopharm, Lotte Healthcare, Emotive, LifeSemantics, Lululab, EverX, Hi, and Rowan set up booths to promote themselves globally.
CES 2024 Innovation Award Winner Logo Photo by CTA
At CES 2024 next year, various digital healthcare companies are again winning Innovation Awards in the preliminary stage. Notably, they have also succeeded in winning awards in other fields such as AI and fitness, indicating growing potential for expansion.
Waycen, which has won Innovation Awards for three consecutive years, achieved a triple crown again this year following last year. WAYMED Cough PRO won in the AI category, and WAYMED Food Allergy won in both the AI and Software & Mobile Applications categories. WAYMED Cough PRO analyzes users’ breathing and coughing sounds to screen respiratory health and, following last year’s 'WAYMED Cough,' has been recognized for its potential expansion into telemedicine services, winning awards two years in a row. WAYMED Food Allergy, which won two awards, is an AI-based personalized oral immunotherapy DTx for children and adolescents with food allergies.
EverX, which develops the musculoskeletal disease solution 'Mora,' first set up a booth at CES in January and this time earned the honor of winning an Innovation Award. Mora provides evidence-based, personalized rehabilitation and exercise curricula specialized for rehabilitation and exercise therapy, and analyzes patients’ movements using AI posture estimation technology. EverX is also developing 'Mora-DTx,' a DTx based on Mora, and 'Mora-Self,' a solution for musculoskeletal self-management for office workers.
Other healthcare companies that introduced their products to the world through Innovation Awards include ▲ ExoSystems’ 'AI Digital Biomarker-Based Healthcare Solution,' which provides personalized exercise interventions based on biosignal feedback and neuromuscular electrical stimulation therapy ▲ DeepBio’s AI-based prostate cancer lesion detection solution 'DeepDx Prostate' ▲ Synergy AI’s AI-based arrhythmia prediction diagnostic solution 'Mac'AI' ▲ Ruah Lab’s wearable respiratory monitoring system 'Ruah' ▲ InBody’s big data solution 'LB Trainer.'
Besides healthcare companies, various domestic companies also succeeded in winning awards in the digital healthcare field. These include ▲ SK Ecoplant’s on-site safety management platform 'Ansim (Sincere about Safety)' ▲ Amorepacific’s beauty tech device 'Lip Cure Balm,' which enables lip diagnosis, care, and makeup all with one device ▲ Ceragem’s bed-type healthcare platform 'Ceragem Master Medical Bed' and IoT-linked healthcare integrated platform 'Ceragem Home Medicare Platform' (which won simultaneously in the smart home category) ▲ Coway’s 'Virex Reclining Massage Bed,' equipped with reclining functions and user-customized massage systems, all selected as digital health Innovation Award winners.
The highest innovation award in the digital health category was given to Abbott’s 'AVEIR Dual Chamber Leadless Pacemaker System.' Unlike conventional pacemakers that implant the main body separately in the body and regulate heartbeats via electrode leads, this system implants a small main body directly inside the heart, significantly reducing the possibility of malfunction. While existing leadless pacemakers use a single-chamber (VR) method, AVEIR was highly evaluated for being the first to adopt a 'dual-chamber' method, designed to regulate both the right atrium and right ventricle.
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