Public R&D Projects-Based Investment and Collaboration Framework for an Overarching South Korean National Strategy of Personalized Medicine

Abstract

Since the South Korean government designated personalized medicine (PM) as a national strategic task in 2016, it has spared no investment to achieve its goals, which were recently accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. This study analyzed investment trends in 17 regions and eight technology clusters related to PM, consisting of 5727 public R&D projects worth USD 148.5 million, from 2015 to 2020. We also illustrated the level of investment for different PM-related technology clusters in each region; various research organizations explicitly verified comparable innovation capabilities for all eight technology fields in 17 regions, showing individual differences in technology areas per region. Our framework provided information to allow implementation of two goals: administering successful PM and improving regional equality in public health and healthcare according to technical and organizational levels. This study empirically demonstrates that it can provide a precise overarching innovation scheme with regional, technical, and organizational dimensions to establish collaboration among different stakeholders, thereby creating a foundation for an overarching national PM strategy.