Kakao Healthcare has signed a strategic business agreement with Providence Health Care (PHC) Ventures, a Canada-based health care platform company and startup accelerator arm of PHC.
Kakao’s health care subsidiary announced Wednesday that it has partnered with PHC Ventures to build an integrated health care solution through collaboration on privacy and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, aiming to use this as a stepping stone for global expansion.
The agreement was inked during the 2025 Global Privacy Assembly in Yongsan District, Seoul, on Monday. The event is an annual international forum that brings together data protection and privacy authorities, legal experts and industry leaders globally.
“Through this collaboration, we plan to further advance Kakao Healthcare’s data analytics solutions and accelerate our entry into global markets, starting with North America,” Shin Soo-yong, chief research officer at Kakao Healthcare, said in a press release.
Through this partnership, the two companies will jointly research and develop an integrated solution by combining Kakao’s health care data search platform Haycorn and Healthcare Data Research Suite with PHC Ventures’ metadata management solution, Integrated Health Informatics Datalab.
The integrated solution will apply Kakao Healthcare’s privacy-enhancing technologies, which allow the use and sharing of data while protecting individuals’ privacy, to implement its eyes-off data strategy. This approach allows for distributed model training without sharing sensitive information.
The data protocols will also adopt globally recognized standards and interoperability protocols to enhance data connectivity.
“We are delighted to collaborate with Kakao Healthcare, a leading digital health care company. This partnership will advance our platform strategy and reinforce our position as a trusted global partner in health care AI,” said Kim So-yean, PHC Ventures director.
The companies said they plan to build on this competitive integrated solution to contribute to the advancement of both countries’ health care ecosystems and expand globally.
The solution is expected to serve as a collaborative model, delivering high-quality health care data services to global corporations and venture companies in the life sciences and biopharmaceutical sectors.
It is also anticipated to become a bridgehead for Kakao Healthcare’s entry into the North American market while expanding its global partnerships.
Kakao Healthcare also recently expanded into Japan, partnering with a Japanese major hospital and pharmaceutical company to roll out its AI-powered personalized weight management service, Phenoet, earlier this month.
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