Kakao Brain teams up with 9 university hospitals

Kakao Brain signed an agreement with nine university hospitals in Korea to develop an artificial intelligence (AI) program to interpret patients’ visual imaging.

For the next two years, the Kakao AI research subsidiary will conduct research with doctors at the nine hospitals. Doctors will advise how certain images should be dealt with and Kakao Brain will try to develop a medical AI program to help doctors, the company said.

The hospitals are Chungnam National University Hospital, Chungbuk National University Hospital, Ewha Womans University Medical Center Seoul, Ewha Womans University Medical Center Mokdong, Keimyung University Dongsan Medical Center, Soon Chun Hyang University Hospital Cheonan, Soon Chun Hyang University Hospital Gumi and Soon Chun Hyang University Hospital Seoul and Ajou University Medical Center.

The first goal is to release an online program to interpret chest X-ray images in the first half of next year. The research will then be expanded to developing a “hyper-scale” AI model, industry jargon for AI using a large number of data.

“We aim to accelerate our medical imaging-reading service using hyper-scale AI technology based on the partnerships,” said Kim Il-doo, CEO of Kakao Brain, in a press release.

Kakao Brain is the AI research and development subsidiary of Kakao, which was started in February 2017. It has released various AI programs including the minDALL-E painter and KoGPT language model.

BY YOON SO-YEON [yoon.soyeon@joongang.co.kr]