Korea’s digital health industry grows 35% in 2021, investments up 67%

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South Korea’s digital healthcare industry hit 1.8 trillion won ($1.4 billion) in sales in 2021, seeing almost 35 percent growth from a year ago, data showed Friday.

A survey conducted by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy and Korea Digital Health Industry Association on 301 digital healthcare companies showed that sales totaled 1.8 trillion won in 2021, up 34.6 percent from a year ago.

By category, sales of medical devices accounted for more than half of the entire figure at 973.1 billion won, followed by health management devices at 254.6 billion won, and digital health management platform 225 billion won.

Investments made by digital healthcare companies soared 66.8 percent to 495.1 billion won in 2021 from a year ago. Investments in facilities and training nearly quadrupled to 144.8 billion won and in research and development soared 35.4 percent to 350.2 billion won.

The digital healthcare industry attracted 1.7 trillion won in investments from home and abroad. More than 35 percent of the investments went to medical devices, followed by doctor-patient matching platforms (21.7 percent), and medical software (19.3 percent).

The industry’s exports came to 799.2 billion won in 2021, up 5.4 percent from a year ago. Imports grew by 22.7 percent to 72.1 billion won.

Medical software saw the largest growth in exports while digital health management platforms in imports.

There were 13,033 individuals working for digital healthcare companies in 2021, up 10.7 percent from a year earlier. More than 70 percent of them worked for small and mid-size enterprises with fewer than 30 employees.

The number of employees per 1 billion won in sales was 7.15, down slightly from 8.7 a year ago. The decline is likely due to the rapid growth in sales.