Medical AI company Vuno taps Japan through M3

Medical artificial intelligence solution provider Vuno said Friday it plans to tap the Japanese market through Sony’s subsidiary M3.

M3 is 33.9 percent owned by Sony and is Japan’s biggest medical data platform company with 280,000 medical professionals enrolled as members.

It has accumulated knowledge in the conservative Japanese medical field, and provides a wide range of services including clinical test designing, marketing support for pharmaceutical firms and remote medicine.

M3 recently founded a joint venture with Naver subsidiary Line in Tokyo, to kick spur its remote medicine business.

Vuno is so far the only foreign AI firm that has inked a sales deal with M3. Its lung computerized tomography diagnosis support system has gained authorization for sales in Japan, and will be distributed by M3.

Vuno’s company name is a nod to the phrase, “View the invisible, know the unknown.”

Founded by three researchers who formerly worked at Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology’s voice-command AI system development field, Vuno has Korea’s first Drug Ministry-approved AI medical device called Vuno Med BoneAge.

It also has AI solutions for early diagnosis of cognitive degeneration, chest X-ray, fundus anomaly detector and lung CT -- all aimed as auxiliary tools for doctors to make faster, more confident diagnosis.

The solutions are like smartphone apps in that they can be transplanted into existing hardware.

Vuno is preparing to make an initial public offering on the Kosdaq bourse within this year.

By Lim Jeong-yeo (kaylalim@heraldcorp.com)