[E-Daily Reporter Hong Ju-yeon ] A South Korean company has thrown down the gauntlet with innovative technology in the flexible endoscope market, where three Japanese firms—Olympus, Pentax, and Fujifilm—dominate more than 95% of the global market. In this market, mechanical control methods have been the industry standard for 50 years, and medical professionals have long performed lengthy procedures by rotating heavy endoscopes using only the strength of their wrists. This approach also had limitations, as diagnostic quality and patient discomfort varied depending on the examiner’s skill level. The demand for new products and technologies continued to grow. MedInTech, founded in 2020, has entered this market with a robotic endoscopy platform that combines motorization and physical AI.

On the 11th of last month, MedInTech officially launched its motorized AI endoscopy systems, “INTION S” and “INTION S AI,” in South Korea. These products mark the world’s first commercialization of Physical AI in the field of gastrointestinal endoscopy. E-Daily’s pharmaceutical and biotech premium content platform, PharmE-Daily, met with CEO Lee Chi-won to hear directly about the company’s future market strategy.

Breaking Down the 50-Year Barrier of Mechanical Endoscopes Through Motorization

The INTION S, unveiled by MediInTech, is a system that replaces the mechanical control method—which has been the standard in the flexible endoscopy field for over 50 years—with motorization. Conventional endoscopes are designed so that medical staff manually turn dials or wheels to control the direction of the endoscope’s tip. Since the wire directly transmits the force applied by the hand, prolonged procedures inevitably led to cumulative strain on the wrists and shoulders. The Intion S replaces this manual force with a motor. By applying electric drive technology, the weight of the control unit was reduced by more than 40%—from 610g to 350g—and the force required to operate the wheel was reduced by up to 85%.

These changes were also evident in clinical settings. Over the past two years, Mediintech has conducted approximately 500 clinical trials in collaboration with six major domestic university hospitals, including Seoul National University Hospital. The results confirmed clinical non-inferiority compared to existing foreign-made endoscopes, as well as reduced physical fatigue and workload for the endoscopist.

Commenting on the clinical results, CEO Lee Chi-won said, “Originally, doctors had to exert all the force required to turn the endoscope wheel by hand.” He added, “The most common feedback we received was that with the Intion S, doctors only need to send an electrical signal—since the motor generates the force on their behalf—allowing them to focus entirely on the treatment.” He continued, “It was evaluated as having performance on par with existing products and superior convenience,” adding, “This is the result of our efforts to innovate the user experience (UX) by reducing weight while maintaining the familiar feel that doctors are accustomed to.”

Integrating Physical AI into Endoscopes

The Intion S AI, launched alongside this product, is a procedural assistance solution that MediInTech positions as the core of its Physical AI strategy, with a total of three solutions now available. “EndoPilot” is a navigation feature where AI preemptively determines and guides the direction the endoscope should take inside the body. “EndoTrack” is a tracking feature that, if a lesion moves off-screen due to the patient’s movement or breathing during a procedure, uses AI to adjust the direction of the endoscope tip in real time to realign the lesion with the center of the screen. 'EndoResect' assists with precise manipulation during the resection phase of the procedure. It has demonstrated excellent performance, achieving a sensitivity of 96.33% and a specificity of 99.39% for malignant lesions in evaluations of its diagnostic performance for stomach cancer.

All three solutions are designed so that the AI intervenes only while the medical staff is pressing a button or foot pedal, and deactivates immediately when they release it. They are designed so that while the AI guides the path or corrects the field of view, the final decision and control always remain with the medical staff. Just as Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) system allows a vehicle to navigate and adjust its direction on its own without the driver touching the steering wheel, MediInTech’s EndoPilot and EndoTrack operate on a similar principle: the AI autonomously controls the endoscope’s direction and tracks lesions without the physician having to manually operate the device.

CEO Lee explained, “We received feedback from doctors saying they would like to have this kind of autonomous steering capability,” adding, “Conventional Japanese mechanical endoscopes operate on the principle that the doctor must pull the wire by hand to move the scope, so even if the AI knows the direction, the structure does not allow for direct steering.” It’s the same principle as how simply installing FSD software in an internal combustion engine vehicle does not make it self-driving. He explained that because MediInTech first motorized the endoscope—laying the necessary hardware foundation—it was able to integrate PhysicalAI on top of it.

In particular, CEO Lee noted, “To date, most medical AI companies have been focused on AI that analyzes images to detect lesions,” adding “MediInTech’s EndoPilot and EndoTrack go a step further by providing ‘Physical AI’—which actually controls the endoscope to move to the location of lesions identified by the AI—and to date, no other company in the medical field has realistically implemented and demonstrated this technology,” he emphasized.

Market-Recognized Technological Capabilities… Next Step: Series C

Since its founding, MediInTech has secured growth funding through a dual approach of private investment and national R&D projects. Cumulative private investment, including the Series B round conducted in 2024, has reached 28 billion won. Series C is scheduled to open in mid-July, and the company aims to go public in the second half of 2028.

Government R&D projects also play a significant role. In 2021, MediInTech was selected as the lead institution for the Inter-ministerial Full-Life-Cycle Medical Device R&D Project and secured a 9.5 billion won contract. In April of this year, it was again selected as the lead institution for the follow-up project, the Inter-ministerial Advanced Medical Device R&D Project, securing an additional 22.8 billion won in funding.

This second-phase project is structured as a collaboration among industry, academia, research institutes, and hospitals, with the participation of Seoul National University Hospital, Seoul National University, KERI, and the Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology (DGIST). Mediintech is overseeing the development of an intelligent motorized robotic endoscope platform; Seoul National University Hospital is responsible for clinical trials and technology validation; Seoul National University is developing AI algorithms for diagnosis and surgical assistance; KERI is handling optical and image processing technologies; and DGIST is developing core technologies for robotic endoscope actuation. The scope of the research will also expand beyond conventional gastrointestinal endoscopes to include specialized endoscopes such as duodenoscopes and cholangioscopes, as well as the development of ultra-small, multi-jointed surgical instruments.

CEO Lee explained, “While the first-phase project focused on creating a motorized endoscope, this second-phase project goes beyond that to build a robotic platform,” adding, “This aligns with the direction our company is heading.” The government’s decision to allocate substantial budgets repeatedly stems from a sense of crisis within the medical community regarding the localization of endoscopes. He said, “When Japan raised the ‘white list’ issue in 2019, Korean doctors expressed concerns, asking, ‘What will happen if endoscope imports are blocked?’” He continued, “A consensus formed that the localization of endoscopes was necessary, and the medical community recognized that Japan’s technological dominance posed a real crisis.”

“Gastrointestinal endoscopes are just the beginning; we aim to leap forward as a surgical robot platform company”

Japanese products hold over 95% of the global flexible endoscope market. With German and Chinese companies dividing up the remainder, Mediintech chose to take on the challenge head-on. CEO Lee pointed out, “If you look at Japanese endoscope companies, they started out as imaging companies that made camera film,” adding, “Even though imaging technology has become a universal technology accessible to everyone with the advent of smartphones, Japanese companies are completely neglecting the development of convenient systems that encompass treatment as well.”

Citing Intuitive Surgical—the U.S. company that has effectively monopolized the rigid surgical robot market with its “Da Vinci” laparoscopic surgical robot—he stated, “Just as Da Vinci has become the standard for rigid surgical robots, Mediintech’s goal is to claim that position in the flexible endoscope-based surgical robot platform.”

The company has also begun expanding overseas. Intion S is currently being used on a pilot basis in Mongolia and the Philippines, and has received approval in Thailand and Indonesia as well. In South Korea, as the product was launched this month, full-scale sales are scheduled to begin in the third quarter or later. CEO Lee expressed his expectation, saying, “We expect to see significant revenue starting this year.” Among overseas markets, CEO Lee identified the United States—which has the largest market size—as the top priority. Mediintech is currently preparing for FDA certification to enter the U.S. market.

CEO Lee’s ultimate goal is to become a surgical robotics platform company, rather than a company focused on a single product. Mediintech has set the development of a hybrid surgical robot—combining the advantages of flexible and rigid endoscopes—as a long-term project. “I want to be a first mover in the surgical robotics field,” he said. “Gastrointestinal endoscopy is just the first product in our robotic platform. By developing and integrating various endoscopes for different medical specialties—such as bronchoscopy and ureteroscopy—we can ultimately advance toward a surgical robotics platform that operates through natural orifices.”