Sison AI Begins Full-Scale Development of 'Vision AI' Technology Targeting the $100 Billion Respiratory Therapy Market

Vision AI video recognition solution company Sison AI is set to launch full-scale development of a smartphone camera-based respiratory therapy platform. With its selection for a Ministry of Health and Welfare R&D project and the establishment of cooperative systems with major domestic medical and AI research institutions, the company is accelerating its efforts to enter the global respiratory therapy market.

On May 22, Sison AI announced that it has been chosen as a joint research and development institution for the "2026 1st Health and Medical Technology R&D Project" promoted by the Ministry of Health and Welfare.

This project is led by the Catholic University of Korea Industry-Academic Cooperation Foundation and involves participation from KAIST in an industry-academia-hospital consortium format. The total project period is three years, with government funding amounting to approximately 825 million won. Sison AI will participate as a core technology partner, taking charge of developing a Vision AI-based respiratory therapy platform.

The focus of this project is to address issues related to the use of inhalers by patients with asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). There have been ongoing concerns in the medical field about the difficulty in clearly distinguishing between cases where patients do not receive proper medication delivery to the lungs due to incorrect inhaler use, and cases where, despite correct usage, the treatment is still ineffective.

In particular, with a recent increase in prescriptions for biological agents costing tens of millions of won per patient annually, the importance of securing data that can accurately identify patients truly in need of high-priced therapies is growing.

Sison AI has proposed a Vision AI solution that analyzes patients' inhaler usage in real time using only a smartphone camera, without the need for dedicated hardware. By analyzing the patient's inhalation phase and breathing timing, the solution provides immediate coaching and transmits actual usage data to medical staff, aiming to improve treatment efficacy.

The company explained that while existing smart inhalers are more expensive than regular inhalers and thus face distribution limitations, Sison AI's software-centric solution has a lower adoption barrier and enables rapid market expansion.

Sison AI also plans to promote step-by-step commercialization in the future. The company will first enter the clinical research and hospital inhaler evaluation solution market, then expand into the B2B market centered on medical institutions by obtaining Software as a Medical Device (SaMD) certification. Subsequently, it plans to secure global approvals such as FDA in the United States and CE in Europe, aiming to enter the North American and European markets and expand licensing businesses targeting global pharmaceutical companies.

The company also stated that it has established a system to operate the entire commercialization process stably, based on its own GPU infrastructure and IDC resources. For its core algorithms, it plans to file domestic priority patent applications first, followed by international patent filings under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT).

According to global market research firm Mordor Intelligence, the market for asthma and COPD treatment devices is expected to grow from approximately $48.2 billion (about 73 trillion won) in 2025 to around $65.2 billion (about 98 trillion won) by 2031.

Nam Woonseong, CEO of Sison AI, stated, "This project will be an important opportunity for Sison AI's Vision AI technology to demonstrate its effectiveness in actual clinical settings," adding, "We will use the secured clinical references as a foundation to actively enter the global respiratory therapy market."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.