Korea’s level of healthcare industry technology is lagging behind compared to advanced countries, according to a “2016 Healthcare Industry Technology Level Survey Report” published by the Korea Health Industry Development Institute _{한국보건산업진흥원}.

The survey accumulated 737 Delphi questionnaires filled out by industrial experts’ opinions on the overall level of technology along with a quantitative research on dissertations and patents.

In the healthcare industry technology gap among major countries, the U.S. ranked first, with EU, Japan, Korea and China trailing behind.

Korea's technology level was 76.1 percent compared to the U.S. and the technology gap period was 3.2 years. Regarding drug development, Korea’s technology trailed further behind with 71.4 percent of the U.S.

The technology level of the countries compared with the U.S., which has the highest technology in the field of drug development, was 87.6 percent for EU, 85 percent for Japan, 71.4 percent for Korea, 63.8 percent for China.

Despite the government’s efforts to encourage the development of new drugs, the technological gap with major countries is still widening, suggesting the need for mid - to long-term investment, the report said.

China ranked bottom in most of the survey criteria. However, experts assessed that China ranked fourth regarding genome-based technology development, surpassing Korea. China showed a higher level of genome-based technology development than Korea compared to that of the U.S. with 75.5 percent, compared to Korea’s 71.8 percent.

Detailed technological elements used for assessing the field of genome-based technology development included genome sequence analysis, big data technology, functional genome technology, and genome information statistical analysis.

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