Rising Digital Healthcare After COVID-19... "Need to Enhance Competitiveness to Prepare for Market Expansion"

[Asia Economy Reporter Hwang Yoon-joo] As the global digital healthcare market rapidly grows, there is a call to enhance domestic industrial competitiveness through new industrial and trade strategies to respond to the expansion of the global market.

According to the "Industrial and Trade Strategy for Activating Digital Healthcare" released on the 15th by the Korea International Trade Association's Institute for International Trade and Commerce, the global digital healthcare market size is expected to grow from $106.3 billion in 2019 to $639.4 billion by 2026, with an average annual growth rate of 29.5%, driven by a significant increase in demand for telemedicine following the COVID-19 pandemic.

Since COVID-19, major countries such as the United States and Japan have relaxed regulations by expanding the scope of telemedicine, actively responding to improve medical accessibility and expand market demand. Related companies are also accelerating their movements and growth. The U.S. telemedicine platform company Teladoc Health has reborn as the world's largest telemedicine company with a market capitalization of $29 billion (based on simple aggregation) through mergers and acquisitions, while China's Ping An Good Doctor, which has 300 million members, saw a 900% surge in new users in January 2020, the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic, compared to the previous month.

The cross-border telemedicine service market is still protected by most countries worldwide through measures such as non-opening of medical service markets, prohibition of data transfer, data localization, and tariffs on electronic transmission. However, recently, developed countries have adopted a comprehensive negotiation approach in Free Trade Agreement (FTA) service negotiations, opening all sectors not listed in reservation lists, pursuing market liberalization including telemedicine services. Furthermore, new international trade norms seeking free transfer and utilization of data, including medical information, are being established through FTAs, spreading global market liberalization.

The report stated, "To enhance the export competitiveness of the telemedicine industry and respond to market pressures from developed countries, industrial and trade issues must be discussed together," and presented industrial strategies for improving domestic telemedicine regulations and trade strategies for export activation.

For improving telemedicine regulations, it emphasized the need to "build related infrastructure such as technology and data standards, safety evaluation, and education systems, and mitigate side effects that may arise from telemedicine adoption." Based on this, industrial strategies that increase medical consumer utility should be promoted, including activating telemedicine between doctors and medical personnel, clarifying regulations on remote monitoring between doctors and patients and telemedicine for foreign patients, establishing a data integration foundation centered on medical consumers, and introducing negative regulations on direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing items.

As trade strategies for export activation, the report suggested expanding the scope of the Information Technology Agreement (ITA) to provide tariff-free benefits for home-use and portable telemedicine devices, negotiating mutual opening of digitally provided medical services and guaranteeing data transfer as key issues in FTA negotiations, and proactively incorporating digital trade norms with high agreement potential from the World Trade Organization (WTO) plurilateral e-commerce negotiations into Korea's FTAs.

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