Naver-invested ichrogene enters Thai market

South Korea's digital healthcare startup ichrogene, with investment from Naver D2 Startup Factory (D2SF), entered into Thai market. 

Naver Corp. on Wednesday said ichrogene signed a deal to supply "iDNADoctor Thai" to the Better Being Hospital in Bangkok, Thailand. This hospital has medical tourism patients from over 50 countries across Southeast Asia, Middle East, Latin America, and Europe.

iDNADoctor Thai is an improved version of ichrogene's proprietary genetic testing solution for disease prediction, customized for the local requirements in Thailand.

ichrogene is a genetic analysis company that commercialized the whole-genome multi-gene analysis algorithm for the first time in Korea. It received investments from Naver's D2SF since its inception.

The company has also maintained cooperation with Naver Cloud in areas such as medical data business, cloud-based genome analysis platform development, and joint entry into the Thai market.

In the future, ichrogene plans to integrate iDNADoctor Thai with the LINE messenger app, which is widely used by Thai mobile users. This will enable medical institutions to directly send the test results to users, as well as conduct consultations based on the analysis results.

"Thailand is a hub of healthcare service in Southeast Asia and a worldwide medical tourism nation," ichrogene's CEO Shin Young-ah said. "We will aggressively target Thailand's hospital healthcare services market centered on genetic testing solution for disease prediction."

Write to Ye-Na Kim at yena@hankyung.com