"Korean-Style 'Healthcare CES' to Launch... 'MEeT 2026' Set for September (Comprehensive)"

Bringing Healthcare Professionals, Technology Companies, and Investors Together
Connecting Clinical Ideas to Commercialization
200-250 Physicians to Participate Free of Charge This Year

A conference on medical technology commercialization, bringing together healthcare professionals, technology companies, and investors, will be held for the first time in Korea next month. The aim is to take clinical ideas that have remained within hospitals and bring them into the market.

According to the healthcare industry on August 14, the medical technology commercialization conference 'MEeT 2026' will take place on September 10 at The Platz in COEX, Gangnam-gu, Seoul. The event is hosted by Ilsong Academy Foundation, Korea Convention Exhibition Research Institute, and ISPM, and is sponsored by Korea Investment Partners and Korea Biotechnology Industry Organization (KoreaBIO). The event name stands for 'Medical Entrepreneurship & Technology' and was chosen to also convey the meaning of the English word 'meet.'

The background of this event is rooted in the recognition that clinical capabilities of K-medical are disconnected from an ecosystem that links technology, investment, and the market. The failure rate of domestic medical artificial intelligence (AI) projects in the pilot stage exceeds 80%, and the failure rate of technology development that does not reflect clinical demand is over 70%. Even if development is successful, it takes an average of 4.2 months to obtain regulatory approval, and about 6 months on average to secure a hospital partner for joint validation.

In contrast, indicators showing demand for commercialization are increasing rapidly. 81.4% of Korea’s 263 physician-founded companies have been established since 2016, and this year’s budget for training physician-scientists has surpassed 120 billion won. The Ministry of Health and Welfare's related research and development (R&D) budget has also increased by 12.6% from the previous year, expanding to 1.0652 trillion won. While the workforce and capital are growing quickly, the actual process of translating results to the market still falls to individual hospitals’ technology commercialization teams and industry-academia cooperation offices. This means that healthcare professionals working outside large or research-centered hospitals with established infrastructure struggle even to get started, despite having similar ideas.

There are also concerns that, outside hospitals, there are currently no suitable places to fill this gap. Academic conferences are focused on research presentations, exhibitions on finished products, and startup events on attracting investment. According to the organizers, MEeT differentiates itself from previous events in that its focus is not on presentations or exhibitions but on facilitating direct connections between participants. This is why the event brings together healthcare professionals, researchers, technology companies, investors, support organizations, regulatory, legal, and tax experts, and hospital representatives in one space.

At the 'MEeT 2026' pre-media day held on the 13th at Doheon Hall, Ilsong Foundation, Yeongdeungpo-gu, Seoul, representatives of Ilsong Foundation are speaking. Photo by Park Jungyeon

The keynote speech for the event will be given by Kevin Grimes, Professor at Stanford University School of Medicine in the United States. He will introduce the commercialization strategy and success cases of Stanford's in-house translational research support program, SPARK. Since its launch in 2006, SPARK has connected approximately 50% of projects to corporate licensing, and more than half of those have actually entered clinical trials. Currently, over 60 universities and research institutes in around 20 countries have adopted this model.

After the lecture, there will be a number of roundtables and one-on-one business consulting sessions. Participants can choose specific tracks—such as collaboration with developers, persuading investors, global expansion, or regulatory, legal, and tax issues—and directly discuss them with lecturers and experts. It is possible to receive individualized feedback on whether an idea can actually be commercialized. Participants in the roundtables will also be supported with follow-up meetings once every one to two months throughout the year. The target attendance is 200 to 250 people, and for this inaugural year, the event will be open to physicians free of charge. At the pre-media day event on August 13, Yoon Eun-joo, Director of the Korea Convention Exhibition Research Institute, stated, "The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is an industrial structure that cannot be held in Korea, but healthcare can." She expressed ambition to grow this event into the 'Korean-style Healthcare CES.'

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