A three-member QTICS medical delegation visited South Korea from 21 to 26 March 2023. QTICS Group started a close cooperation with UTAC Korea back in 2022, which resulted in the establishment of the QTICS Group Korea joint venture at the end of the year. The visit was made possible by the appropriate professional support of the new company that was formed, prepared customer meetings and the traditional KIMES medical technology exhibition and fair in the second half of March. The team, consisting of a senior consultant, a sales manager and a medical division manager, held a training session on the European regulations (MDR/IVDR) and the relevant standard requirements for nearly 100 interested visitors as part of the official programme on the morning of day 1 of the fair. The training was also attended by Boglárka Varga, Foreign Economic Attaché of the Embassy of Hungary in Seoul.

The development of the Medical Division in this direction is no coincidence. South Korea has a huge and growing medical device industry with 3 major industrial centres (Daegu-Gyeongbuk, Gyeonggi Province, Busan-Ulsan). To give a sense of the scale, it is worth noting that KMDIA, a major medical device association, currently has over 1000 member companies. The huge industrial potential and the strong economic relations with Hungary, which have been established for a long time, make it clear that we should support South Korean companies in bringing their devices to market through the QTICS medical model, which has been confirmed many times by domestic companies in the past. During the visit, the delegation had separate meetings with several companies, in addition to their Korean counterparts. In these meetings, we were able to discuss in detail the specificities of the devices intended for the European market and the issues raised by the conformity assessment procedure.

Two days of the visit were dedicated to meeting as many of the hundreds of exhibitors as possible in person. Most of the exhibitors were Korean companies, but there were also many from China, Taiwan, with the odd European or other Asian company. The experience of talking to the companies was very mixed. A relatively small number of companies reported that they were fully prepared for the challenges of the MDR changeover, usually larger companies with significant turnover. The vast majority of exhibiting firms indicated that they were early or mid-stage in the process, having already used some form of consultancy, but there were many that had not yet started or had a new asset where the complex package of services and expertise offered by QTICS medical could be of significant assistance. This was equally true for the vast majority of start-up companies. There were many who asked questions or made requests about specific member companies' expertise (e.g. conducting clinical trials). We met a number of companies that for various reasons are not marketing their devices in the European market. In these cases we were able to offer important information to get them started. We have also negotiated with service providers, consultancy organisations and laboratories with whom we can complement our work excellently, either by channelling customer needs together or by combining different specific knowledge sets.

The visit was an important first step in a long building process. It is hoped that our work will enable more and more Korean-developed products to enter the European holistic care system, which will further strengthen cooperation between the two countries. In addition to the strict MDR transition, the convergence of the medtech industries of the two countries could also be beneficial in terms of knowledge and technology transfer and innovation content. Korea has been one of the most successful countries in the fight against covid-19, thanks in part to one of the world's best-run healthcare delivery systems and the medical device industry that serves it. In the future, QTICS medical will do its utmost to channel as much of the development and operational experience gained there as possible into domestic developments and to familiarise as many manufacturers as possible with the requirements of European regulations for successful MDR/IVDR compliance.

The trip was an excellent opportunity for the two teams to get to know each other and to strengthen the human relations that are an important basis for cooperation. Our Korean hosts were very accommodating and, although time was limited, we were able to see some of the sights of Seoul and, through shared lunches and dinners, to sample some of the gems of Korean gastronomy.