Hecto Group will develop an artificial intelligence (AI) medical device to support early diagnosis of lung cancer and predict recurrence.
Hecto Group said on the 1st that its dedicated AI unit, the HAI (Hecto AI) headquarters, will join the OnKoTECT consortium centered on Bundang Seoul National University Hospital to carry out a national project in the digital healthcare field under the Bioindustry Technology Development Program by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Resources and develop AI-based software medical devices.
The OnKoTECT consortium brings together major domestic medical institutions and AI/data corporations with Bundang Seoul National University Hospital at its core. It will receive a total of 15.5 billion won in research funding through Dec. 2030 to develop AI technologies for early diagnosis and recurrence prediction of pancreatic and lung cancers and push for commercialization.
The consortium will operate by combining the clinical capabilities of medical institutions with the technological prowess of corporations, moving from AI software development to clinical validation and regulatory approval. Kim Jae-yong, head of the Medical Research Institute at Bundang Seoul National University Hospital, serves as the overall principal investigator.
Within the consortium, Hecto Group is responsible for developing LuTECT-1, an AI medical device that assists in early diagnosis of lung cancer, and LuTECT-2, which supports prediction of lung cancer recurrence. The company plans to commercialize them for use in general hospitals, health checkup centers, and national lung cancer screening after approval from the Ministery of Food and Drug Safety.
Hecto Group plans to develop software as a medical device (SaMD) that can be applied in clinical settings by combining its accumulated AI technologies with clinical data. It currently possesses technologies such as recommendation systems, Computer Vision, small language models (sLLM), and AI agents, and is building explainable AI (XAI), a federated learning system, and an MLOps based on Machine Learning.
Kim Yeon-uk, a professor of pulmonology at Bundang Seoul National University Hospital in charge of the lung cancer area within the consortium, said, "AI technology that detects lung cancer early using only imaging has already been developed in several places," and added, "This time, we will develop technology that predicts not only early diagnosis but also post-surgical recurrence by leveraging multimodal data across six areas, including genomics and pathology."