Severance Hospital Named Newsweek’s “AI Innovation Leader”

Clinical applications include a patient monitoring system and AI to predict liver metastasis in pancreatic cancer
Reached 50,000 robotic surgeries... Expanding digital innovation in clinical care

Severance Hospital has been named an “AI Innovation Leader” by Newsweek, the U.S. current affairs magazine. The recognition acknowledges the hospital’s achievements in applying artificial intelligence (AI) in clinical settings, including patient monitoring and predicting the risk of cancer metastasis.

Severance Hospital said on October 22 that it was selected as an AI Innovation Leader in the “World’s Best Smart Hospitals 2027” ranking released by Newsweek and global research firm Statista. This year, Newsweek added the AI Innovation Leader category to the ranking.

A view of Yonsei University Health System. Yonsei University Health System

The evaluation covered hospitals in 33 countries worldwide and considered recommendations from medical professionals (67.5%), a survey assessing the adoption of digital technologies such as AI, robotics, and telemedicine (30%), and whether hospitals held digital health care certifications (2.5%).

Severance Hospital has worked to apply digital technologies in clinical settings, including by building systems to forecast and address demand for hospital beds, operating rooms, and intensive care units.

One notable example is SeVue, a patient monitoring system that integrates information from medical devices across hospital wards. It analyzes patients’ vital signs in real time to detect early signs of deterioration and alert medical staff. It also supports patient management by connecting with electronic medical records (EMRs).

The hospital also developed LiMPC, an AI model that predicts the risk of liver metastasis in pancreatic cancer patients. The model uses 21 variables available in EMRs, including blood test results, age, and sex, to predict the risk of liver metastasis that has not been detected through imaging tests. The hospital said the model achieved a prediction accuracy of more than 80% in validation using data from multiple medical institutions in South Korea.

The hospital has also accumulated clinical experience and data in robotic surgery. Severance Hospital introduced robotic surgery in 2005, becoming the first in South Korea to do so, and this year became the first single medical institution in the world to perform 50,000 robotic surgeries. It has established systems for standardizing procedures, certifying medical staff qualifications, and providing step-by-step training and evaluation. Building on these systems, the hospital is expanding clinical care innovation using AI and digital technologies.

“This result recognizes the efforts of all our staff, including medical professionals, to consistently introduce digital technologies into clinical settings in order to provide better health care services to patients,” said Lee Kangyoung, director of Severance Hospital. “We will use AI and digital technologies to improve the efficiency of medical staff’s work and create a care environment where they can focus more on patients.”

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