Three Korean Companies Form Consortium for AI-Powered Senior Care at Home
NHN, its senior care unit NHN Waplat, and Kakao Healthcare formed a consortium on Sunday to build an AI-powered smart home care platform. The three companies signed a memorandum of understanding to compete for funding under South Korea's Ministry of Health and Welfare AI smart home care initiative.
The project addresses a fragmentation problem in elderly care. Safety monitoring, health tracking, and daily-life data currently live in separate systems managed by different providers. A doctor checking blood sugar levels may not see mobility data from a smart home sensor, and a care coordinator may miss medication adherence information.
The consortium will integrate these data streams onto a single platform. Continuous glucose monitors, blood pressure devices, and smartphone apps will feed into a unified system. AI will analyze the combined data to flag health risks and coordinate care across providers.
The goal is to keep seniors living independently at home rather than moving to long-term care facilities. South Korea's population is aging rapidly-the country will become a "super-aged society" within a decade, with over 20% of residents over 65.
Division of Labor
NHN will provide the AI infrastructure to process and analyze large datasets. NHN Waplat will operate the care platform using its existing Life Assistant app, which tracks safety, health metrics, and emotional well-being through smartphones. Kakao Healthcare will contribute its PASTA chronic disease management system, which uses AI to monitor conditions like diabetes and hypertension.
Kakao Healthcare has already demonstrated this approach. It runs smart blood sugar management programs with local health departments and participated in a government-backed hyper-scale AI healthcare project.
Next Steps
The consortium plans to expand its membership and establish standard operating procedures. The companies have signaled intent to pursue public demonstration projects, which would test the platform with real users before wider rollout.
Hwang Sun-young, CEO of NHN Waplat, said the agreement represents "a starting point for implementing an integrated care model by linking AI infrastructure, care services and health management services on a single platform."
For healthcare professionals, the model offers a template for how fragmented care systems might consolidate around AI-driven analysis. Rather than building entirely new infrastructure, the consortium links existing tools-apps, wearables, and disease management systems-through a common analytical layer.
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