Medical device industry and the medical cluster in Daegu, Korea

Abstract

Medical device industry has its own features such as, interdisciplinary nature, high-value product, regulatory barrier and specific consumer. Many Korean companies in medical device industry are mostly small and medium sized and face low profit and low R&D investment. To promote medical device industry, Korean government has launched a medical cluster projects in 2009 continuing to 2038. One of them is Medivally project located in Daegu, eastern southern to Seoul, the capital city of Korea. The Medivalley consists of core facilities and R&D centers of medical device or drug companies. The core facilities include Medical Device Development Center (MDDC), main goal of which is providing one-stop solution encompassing applied R&D support, prototyping, effectiveness evaluations etc. for whoever needs them focusing on ICT (Information Communication Technology) based high-tech medical devices.