Abstract
Health industry, a knowledge based high value-added industry, is being considered as a strategic area for the 21C and many advanced countries are making every endeavors for the promotion of health industry along with information technology, new materials, and mechatronics. Korean health industry, however, has been excluded from the governmental supports as well as bound by strict regulation so far, and there is a significant gap in technology compared with advanced countries. In 21C, technology is the main factor of national competitiveness and that is why the role of R&D institutes are so important in the high level of competition to cope with the technology protection policies of advanced countries. In this article, with Directory of Korean R&D Institutes published by Korea Industry Technology Association, I reviewed the trends of R&D institute of health industry. Main findings of the research can be summarized as follows. The portion of health industry R&D institute is 3.6% of total R&D institute but the amount of R&D investment is over than 5% This means health industry are knowledge based and R&D intensified industry, meanwhile the variations of same industry R&D institutes of health industry is huge in R&D investments and other activities. Regional distributions of health industry institutes show some kind of different patterns in each industry areas. Medical devices and Medical informatics's preference of metropolitan region are distinguished with other industry areas. Many of the institutes are located in same site of it's company rather than operating separate building for R&D specific uses. It is better for transforming ideas to products and close cooperation of research body with product lines, but it is a handicap for networking and communicating with other research institutions too. It takes 18.4yrs for bearing R&D institute on the average. For a long times 'copy products' or 'me too products' policies were easy way to maintain business entities. But recently, it is recognized that research activities are essential component of sustaining it's own business firms. This means technology itself is leading power of corporation itself in the high level of competition.
