| Hyun-hee Na, Vice President of JNPMEDI
| Dreamed of developing domestic new drugs during her time as a physician
| The company’s integrated data system ‘MAVEN’
| Developed to enable the execution of global clinical trials
| Pointed out the reality of investments concentrated in AI
“I want our company to be remembered not simply as a firm that conducts clinical trials on behalf of others, but as one that accelerates drug development with global-standard IT solutions.”
On the 23rd, Hyun-hee Na, Vice President of JNPMEDI, spoke about the company’s goals and vision. Her career path changed completely in 2005, while she was serving as an assistant clinical professor at Seoul Paik Hospital, when she took on the role of reviewing clinical trials for multinational pharmaceutical companies at the Institutional Review Board (IRB). At that time, the domestic pharmaceutical industry was centered on generics and incrementally modified drugs, while global pharmaceutical companies were consistently developing new drugs.
“I saw doctors (MDs) directly participating in drug development at global pharmaceutical companies, and I began to hope that one day patients in Korea could also be treated with our own original drugs,” she recalled.
Subsequently, she joined MSD, marking her official entry into the industry. Having personally treated patients as a specialist in internal medicine and nephrology, she has now spent 20 years looking at the industry as a drug development strategist and clinical development expert.
As a former physician, her clinical development philosophy is centered on the patient. “Drug development is another form of medical treatment,” Vice President Na emphasized. “Every stage of development is an extension of my experience treating patients.” Her experience in direct patient care significantly influences clinical design and endpoint selection. This is because field experience serves as a crucial standard for judging ‘what patients can actually endure’ and ‘clinical significance,’ which cannot be fully understood through numerical data or research papers alone.
Having experienced multinational and domestic pharmaceutical companies as well as contract research organizations (CROs)—including MSD, Sanofi, GE, Yuhan, and LG Chem—Vice President Na has seen her perspective on clinical development evolve.
“In the past, my main goal was simply to create good medicine. However, at CROs, I witnessed the reality where the ‘survival’ of biotech companies becomes their development strategy,” she said. “I realized that the most important strategy is not the theoretically best one, but the one a company can actually execute.”
She identified the ‘investment environment’ as the biggest challenge for the Korean drug development ecosystem. “Drug development is an industry that requires long-term commitment and large-scale capital, but recently, as investment has shifted toward the AI field, support for basic biotech is decreasing,” she pointed out. “If the R&D ecosystem becomes biased toward a specific field, sustainability will inevitably decline.”
Regarding JNPMEDI’s future strategy, she emphasized leapfrogging into a global solution provider. “Korea’s clinical development infrastructure and expertise are sufficient, but there are time and regional limitations in accumulating global experience,” Vice President Na explained. “In contrast, IT solutions have fewer time and regional constraints, making it an area where we can enter the global market more quickly.”
The area she is particularly focused on at JNPMEDI follows this line of reasoning. “Since clinical trials are an industry that records and manages vast amounts of data, an integrated system that can process this data is the core of competitiveness,” she said. “JNPMEDI is currently advancing its solutions, such as ‘MAVEN,’ to enable the execution of complex global clinical trials.”
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| Hyun-hee Na, Vice President of JNPMEDI
| Dreamed of developing domestic new drugs during her time as a physician
| The company’s integrated data system ‘MAVEN’
| Developed to enable the execution of global clinical trials
| Pointed out the reality of investments concentrated in AI
“I want our company to be remembered not simply as a firm that conducts clinical trials on behalf of others, but as one that accelerates drug development with global-standard IT solutions.”
On the 23rd, Hyun-hee Na, Vice President of JNPMEDI, spoke about the company’s goals and vision. Her career path changed completely in 2005, while she was serving as an assistant clinical professor at Seoul Paik Hospital, when she took on the role of reviewing clinical trials for multinational pharmaceutical companies at the Institutional Review Board (IRB). At that time, the domestic pharmaceutical industry was centered on generics and incrementally modified drugs, while global pharmaceutical companies were consistently developing new drugs.
“I saw doctors (MDs) directly participating in drug development at global pharmaceutical companies, and I began to hope that one day patients in Korea could also be treated with our own original drugs,” she recalled.
Subsequently, she joined MSD, marking her official entry into the industry. Having personally treated patients as a specialist in internal medicine and nephrology, she has now spent 20 years looking at the industry as a drug development strategist and clinical development expert.
As a former physician, her clinical development philosophy is centered on the patient. “Drug development is another form of medical treatment,” Vice President Na emphasized. “Every stage of development is an extension of my experience treating patients.” Her experience in direct patient care significantly influences clinical design and endpoint selection. This is because field experience serves as a crucial standard for judging ‘what patients can actually endure’ and ‘clinical significance,’ which cannot be fully understood through numerical data or research papers alone.
Having experienced multinational and domestic pharmaceutical companies as well as contract research organizations (CROs)—including MSD, Sanofi, GE, Yuhan, and LG Chem—Vice President Na has seen her perspective on clinical development evolve.
“In the past, my main goal was simply to create good medicine. However, at CROs, I witnessed the reality where the ‘survival’ of biotech companies becomes their development strategy,” she said. “I realized that the most important strategy is not the theoretically best one, but the one a company can actually execute.”
She identified the ‘investment environment’ as the biggest challenge for the Korean drug development ecosystem. “Drug development is an industry that requires long-term commitment and large-scale capital, but recently, as investment has shifted toward the AI field, support for basic biotech is decreasing,” she pointed out. “If the R&D ecosystem becomes biased toward a specific field, sustainability will inevitably decline.”
Regarding JNPMEDI’s future strategy, she emphasized leapfrogging into a global solution provider. “Korea’s clinical development infrastructure and expertise are sufficient, but there are time and regional limitations in accumulating global experience,” Vice President Na explained. “In contrast, IT solutions have fewer time and regional constraints, making it an area where we can enter the global market more quickly.”
The area she is particularly focused on at JNPMEDI follows this line of reasoning. “Since clinical trials are an industry that records and manages vast amounts of data, an integrated system that can process this data is the core of competitiveness,” she said. “JNPMEDI is currently advancing its solutions, such as ‘MAVEN,’ to enable the execution of complex global clinical trials.”
✔️ View Original Article