South Korea-based medical AI solutions development company VUNO announced last month that it signed a license agreement with M3, one of Sony's subsidiaries, to distribute its AI solutions in the Japanese market. 

This agreement allows VUNO to strategically approach and make inroads into the conservative Japanese medical market, harnessing M3’s sizable body of data. M3 is Japan’s largest medical informational platform company of which Sony owns 33.9% of the shares. It has 280,000 members who are part of the medical community and has a diverse business portfolio in the medical field including clinical research planning, pharmaceutical company marketing consultation, and telemedicine.

According to VUNO, it is the first overseas company to sign a sales contract with M3. VUNO plans to safely deploy its VUNO Med series in the Japanese market which has higher entry barriers, galvanizing M3’s extensive distribution and hospital networks within Japan.

The company also seeks to sell its lung CT diagnostic supporting tool which already received regulatory approval in Japan, on M3’s AI medical device sales platform, and is also actively collaborating with M3 to launch other AI-powered medical devices that are to gain approval in the near future.

THE LARGER TREND

VUNO recently obtained CE Mark for five of its solutions, which are: VUNO Med –BoneAge, VUNO Med –DeepBrain, VUNO Med -Chest X-Ray, VUNO Med –Fundus AI and VUNO Med –LungCT AI, Healthcare IT News reported.

M3 established a joint venture with LINE, a NAVER affiliate recently in Japan. Notably, the joint venture ran a free remote health consultation service with doctors in response to growing public health concerns caused by the spread of the COVID-19 virus, under Japan’s Ministry of Economic, Trade and Industry (METI) from mid to end March 2020. 

ON THE RECORD

“Signing a license agreement with M3, a medical data company that has an extensive online distribution network in Japan is a remarkable business achievement. This will contribute to an increase in VUNO’s sales by targeting the Japanese medical device market, one of the largest in the world, and we will continue to push forth with tackling the world medical market in collaboration with global companies and institutions that are currently partnered with VUNO, going forward,” said Hyun-Jun Kim, CEO of VUNO.