NHN said on Sunday it formed a consortium with senior care-focused unit NHN Waplat and Kakao Healthcare to participate in the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s artificial intelligence smart home care project and signed a memorandum of understanding to build the service.

The agreement was pursued to take part in the AI smart home care task under the AX-Sprint programme, for which the ministry announced a call for proposals on March 26. The task aims to build a care platform that supports independent living by combining smart devices and AI technology in the home environment.

Managers of safety, check-in, daily-life data and health data such as blood sugar and blood pressure are currently split, making it difficult to use integrated indicators and provide care services. The ministry is pursuing a smart home model that combines devices, data and AI to collect daily-life and health data, analyse it in an integrated way and link it to key programmes.

Through the agreement, the three companies will build a system to realise healthy ageing in place rather than in long-term care facilities. The system will collect safety, check-in and daily-life data via smartphones and secure health indicators using devices such as continuous glucose monitors and hourly blood pressure monitors. The collected data will be integrated and analysed to be implemented as an integrated care model.

Each company will share roles by leveraging its capabilities in AI infrastructure, care services and health management services.

NHN will support an AI infrastructure environment that can process and analyse large-scale data. NHN Waplat will be responsible for building and operating services based on its Waplat AI Life Assistant platform, which manages safety, check-ins, health, daily life and emotions via smartphones.

Kakao Healthcare will support health management services through its AI-based mobile chronic disease management solution, PASTA. It will advance a data-driven chronic disease management structure based on its demonstration experience, including local government public health centre smart blood sugar management programmes and the Ministry of Science and ICT-led project to develop healthcare services based on hyper-scale AI.

Hwang Hee (황희), CEO of Kakao Healthcare, said, "We will combine the PASTA service, NHN’s platform operation experience and AI technology to create a health management model for an era of super-ageing."

Hwang Sun-young (황선영), director of NHN’s Legal and Policy Group and CEO of NHN Waplat, said, "This agreement is a starting point for implementing an integrated care model by linking AI infrastructure, care services and health management services on a single platform." She added, "We will expand the consortium to build a standard operating model and pursue public demonstration projects going forward."