Professors Sun Choi and Jeonghoon Ahn Became Expert Lay Members of Bio-health Innovation Commission
- Date2024.01.23
- 9547
Professor Sun Choi at the College of Pharmacy and Professor Jeonghoon Ahn at the Health Convergence Department became expert lay members of the Bio-health Innovation Commission, an organization to make South Korea a vital country in the bio-health industry across the globe.
The Bio-health Innovation Commission is a pan-governmental control tower for taking a prohibitive lead in the global bio-health industry. The committee, chaired by the Prime Minister, comprises twelve heads of government ministries -- including the Ministry of Economy and Finance, Ministry of Science and ICT, Ministry of Health and Welfare, Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy, Ministry of SMEs and Startups -- and seventeen experts lay members from various industries, such as pharmaceutical, medical devices, digital healthcare, academia, and investment. The committee is expected to focus on reviewing and deliberating policies and plans aimed at providing support throughout the entire cycle of the development of bio-health technology, the development and commercialization of bio-health products, insurance coverage, and market expansion, as well as playing the role of the control tower of pharma- and bio-related policies, providing systematic support for integration and convergence of the industry and the latest technologies.
Professor Sun Choi | Professor Jeonghoon Ahn
Professor Sun Choi is the director of the Global AI Drug Discovery Center and an Ewha Fellow. She innovatively introduced theoretical biophysical methods using molecular modeling in medicinal chemistry and unraveled three-dimensional structure, dynamics, multiscale simulation, and in vivo signaling mechanism of target proteins, as well as leading a new paradigm of big-data and AI-based drug discovery as a drug design expert. Thanks to her outstanding academic performance, Professor Choi received various awards, including the Presidential Commendation and Mogam Award, and became a regular member of the Korean Academy of Science and Technology in 2024. She is also a principal investigator of five institutions, such as the National Leading Research Laboratory of Molecular Modeling & Drug Design, and labs for creating a platform for AI-based drug design and innovative drug discovery.
Professor Jeonghoon Ahn is a health economics expert. He became a faculty member of Ewha Womans University in 2016 after his career as a professor at Keck School of Medicine of USC and a senior researcher at the National Evidence-based Healthcare Collaborating Agency (NECA). His research interest is in the evaluation of medical technology and public healthcare policies, including their viability analysis. He received ministerial commendations from the minister of health and welfare twice, in 2013 and 2020, for his contribution to improving the drug pricing system in the National Health Insurance Service with his various research on viability analysis of public-health-related technologies and public health policies. He is now a chair of the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes (ISPOR) Asia Consortium, a research committee chair of the Korean Association of Health Technology Assessment, and an editor of the Korean Journal of Health Economics and Policy. He is also a founder of HTAsiaLink, a network of organizational and individual members involved in HTA research and evidence-based policy decision-making in the Asia and Pacific regions, created in 2011.
The Bio-health Innovation Commission proposed various goals, such as global blockbuster drug development, increasing bio-health-related exports (e.g. medicine and medical devices), raising the level of bio-health technologies, creating a bio-related research VLDB, and fostering core talents in the bio-health industry, in order to build the bedrock for the bio-health industry to grow as one of Korea’s future growth engines and core strategic industries and contribute to the goal of making Korea a vital country in the bio-health industry across the globe.
The global bio-health market is expected to grow significantly, following the semiconductor industry, reaching 3,800 trillion won, 4.4 times as big as the semiconductor market, by 2027. Thus, the government plans to double the bio-health-related exports, raise the level of related technologies by 82%, and foster 110 thousand core specialists. Prime Minister Duck-soo Han emphasized that “The global scale race for taking a lead in the bio-health market with great growth potentials has already begun. As a collaborative control tower of public and private sectors, the Bio-health Innovation Commission will strive to make Korea a vital country in the bio-health industry across the globe by making fundamental innovations.” at the first meeting of the Bio-health Innovation Commission in the Government Complex on Friday, December 22nd.