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Korean company Ybrain is repositioning itself from an electroceuticals developer into a mental health AI platform company, tapping new senior leadership to scale data-driven, end-to-end diagnosis and treatment across hospital and home settings.
In a recent announcement, the company said that it appointed former Vuno executive Lim Seok-hun as chief business officer (CBO) and ex-SyntekaBio vice president Lee Byung-ho as head of R&D strategy, bringing in leadership experience spanning medical AI commercialisation, pharmaceuticals, and data platform development.
Lim joins Ybrain from Vuno, where he also served as CBO and led the commercialisation and overseas expansion of AI healthcare solutions, following more than 20 years of marketing and strategy experience at Samsung Electronics.
Lee, meanwhile, previously led the development of an AI-based candidate discovery platform and advanced cloud-based service models for drug R&D at SyntekaBio. He has also held roles at major pharma companies Yuhan Corporation and Chong Kun Dang, as well as at Samsung Electronics, and served as a working-level committee member for the AI-based New Drug Development Project overseen by South Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT.
THE LARGER CONTEXT
Ybrain's hiring of top guns from major listed Korean firms in electronics, pharma, and medical AI comes as it scales to offer a comprehensive, AI and data-driven platform for personalised diagnosis, management, and treatment of major neurological conditions such as depression and dementia.
In a statement, the company said it will leverage 1.41 million EEG and mental health data points accumulated from 817 hospitals and clinics nationwide that have adopted its products, using the datasets to train AI models for personalised electroceutical prescriptions, early prediction of symptom deterioration, and real-time monitoring in home environments.
Ybrain currently offers solutions for objective brain state assessment and treatment, including its EEG examination device SCAN and the transcranial direct current stimulation device, MINDD STIM+, Korea's first non-oral antidepressant. It has also developed a brain-computer interface-based neurofeedback system, which allows patients to train their own brainwaves.
According to the company, it is preparing to expand into hospital-to-home treatment pathways and subscription-based services while refining its data analytics algorithms and diversifying revenue streams.
Newly-appointed CBO Lim said Ybrain is well-positioned to offer subscription-based mental care services given its nationwide clinical network and extensive datasets, adding that the company aims to demonstrate practical use cases for AI-enabled mental health care delivery.
Lee, who now heads the company's R&D strategy, said the company is advancing toward an intelligent mental healthcare ecosystem that delivers optimal, personalised treatment by integrating data and AI with electroceutical technologies.
