Seoul St. Mary's Hospital incubator to showcase 14 teams' innovations at KHF 2026

Commercialization track's inaugural 11 teams get first official market validation

Center to operate 14 large integrated booths

Officials from the Mustard Seed Growth Center pose for a photo at the 2026 Commercialization Track launch ceremony, held Jan. 29 at the center's office in the Seocho Peace Building in Seoul. [Seoul St. Mary's Hospital]

The Mustard Seed Growth Center at Catholic University of Korea's Seoul St. Mary's Hospital is set to unveil commercialization results from ideas sourced in clinical settings and developed into products and services.

The center announced Tuesday that 14 teams will participate in KHF 2026 — the Korea International Hospital and Health Tech Fair — held at COEX in Seoul from Wednesday through Friday, presenting medical and digital healthcare solutions.

KHF, hosted annually by the Korean Hospital Association, is the country's leading hospital and medical industry trade fair. Last year's event drew around 300 domestic and international companies and approximately 21,855 visitors.

Since opening in February 2021, the center has each year selected and nurtured "future committee members" — innovators who develop ideas into concrete proposals — through its Innovation and Startup Idea Competition. The sixth edition drew a record 130 submissions, a roughly 67 percent increase from the previous year, with a competition ratio of 6.8 to 1.

This year, the center added a new "commercialization track" alongside the existing competition track for the first time. It selected 11 teams from the third through fifth cohorts of future committee members and supported them from February through July with product refinement, corporate matching and market-entry preparation. Through a partnership with Dankook University's Wearable Manufacturing Data Platform Center, the teams also gained access to 3D printing and reverse-engineering infrastructure to complete exhibition prototypes and mockups.

The defining feature of the commercialization track is that it does not leave hospital-sourced ideas at the competition stage — it connects them through corporate matching, product refinement and market-entry preparation.

By establishing the commercialization track, the Mustard Seed Growth Center has expanded its support from idea discovery through product development to market entry. At KHF 2026, the center plans to present the commercialization achievements it has built to date.

Poster for the Mustard Seed Growth Center's participation in KHF 2026. [Seoul St. Mary's Hospital]

A total of 14 teams will operate integrated booths at KHF 2026 — the 11 inaugural commercialization track teams plus three teams that have already completed commercialization. Solutions on display include an AI-powered voice pre-triage system for emergency room acuity prediction, an AI automated arterial blood collection system using optical and ultrasound technology, a home hospice AI palliative care nursing platform, a next-generation smart patient transport solution and a nasogastric tube fixation medical device, among other clinically sourced innovations.

On Thursday at 1 p.m., the center will hold a standalone forum at a COEX seminar room under the theme "Seeds from the Clinical Field: Where AI and Knowledge Platforms Grow a Forest of Innovation." Three sessions will cover the center's operational case studies and hospital technology management broadly, with booth visits, product demonstrations and one-on-one on-site consultations also available.

Two flagship commercialization cases — OrthosCare and the XR team — will also participate in the fair. OrthosCare, led by Kim Jong-ho, a professor at Yeouido St. Mary's Hospital, developed a musculoskeletal digital therapeutic device called ANAPA and, within five months of its launch, secured adoption at 21 hospitals including 14 tertiary care centers. The team is currently conducting confirmatory clinical trials involving 12 university hospitals and is pursuing regulatory approval from the US Food and Drug Administration and European CE MDR certification.

The XR team, with the participation of Jo Hyeon-mu, a team leader at Eunpyeong St. Mary's Hospital, jointly developed with Raon Meta what it describes as the world's first XR-based laboratory animal autopsy training content, securing patents in both South Korea and the United States. An AI and virtual reality convergence training platform called Metademy, built on that technology, is now in use at educational institutions including Pusan National University.

"Our participation in KHF 2026 is a meaningful occasion to show that the small ideas of hospital staff have grown into products that solve real clinical problems and found their footing in the market," said Kim Dae-jin, director of the Mustard Seed Growth Center. "We will continue our role as a medical and healthcare innovation incubator and expand our collaborative relationships with hospital stakeholders and investment institutions."

woo@heraldcorp.com