Kakao Healthcare to build metaverse healthcare platform

Kakao Healthcare, a digital healthcare platform unit of South Korea's Kakao, announced on Wednesday that it has been selected as the final operator of the 2023 Metaverse Pioneer Project in the medical sector, which was jointly launched by the Ministry of Science and ICT and the National Information and Communications Promotion Agency (NIPA).

The project aims to overcome the spatial and temporal constraints of the metaverse and healthcare services and promote national health and create future food.

Currently, metaverse in the healthcare field is being used more for hospital promotion, medical knowledge education, and collaboration between medical professionals than for personal health management.

The Kakao Healthcare Consortium plans to build a metaverse platform that can be expanded to various personalized health management services and provide personalized musculoskeletal and mental health management services. 

Musculoskeletal disorders caused by repetitive movements or bad posture for a long period have been steadily increasing, with about 17.6 million patients in 2019, accounting for 10% of total medical expenses.

The demand for mental health is also steadily increasing due to depression and work-related stress. Korea has the highest prevalence of depression at 36.8% among OECD countries.

Write to Ji-Eun Jeong at jeong@hankyung.com