KT is joining hands with Asan Medical Center to build an "AI hospital" that applies AI in clinical settings.

KT signed a memorandum of understanding on Thursday with Asan Medical Center at KT's Gwanghwamun Building West in Seoul to build an AI hospital and develop AI medical services for use in clinical settings.

The two organisations plan to foster Asan Medical Center as a base for applying and verifying medical AI technologies. They also plan to identify and apply AI transformation models for clinical settings, including a next-generation hospital information system. Once an AI hospital is built, AI will support medical image reading and automatically collect and analyse patient health records scattered across multiple systems. Medical staff can use this for diagnosis and clinical decision-making.

They will gradually expand AI services with verified clinical effectiveness to clinical settings. They will also jointly develop services to improve patient experience and enhance medical staff work efficiency.

KT will use its AI, cloud and data-based AI transformation platform and infrastructure to support service model development and technology verification, and will participate in developing AI medical services tailored for clinical application. Asan Medical Center will identify needs across clinical care and research settings and will provide clinical advice and effectiveness assessments during AI service development and demonstration.

Starting late this month, the two will form a working-level consultative body to push ahead with detailed tasks and discuss ways to apply and spread medical AI technologies in clinical settings.

Park Seung-il (박승일), president of Asan Medical Center, said it will work with KT to identify and apply AI medical services that can be verified in clinical settings.

Kim Bong-kyun (김봉균), executive vice president and head of KT's Enterprise division, said it plans to bring together key technologies and capabilities to build an AI hospital with Asan Medical Center and jointly develop AI medical services that can be applied in clinical settings.