On a brisk morning in April 2026, the world of mental health care in South Korea looks remarkably different than it did just a decade ago. The transformation has come not from a new pill or a high-tech hospital, but from the smartphone in your pocket. At the center of this digital health revolution stands HAII, a pioneering company led by its founder and CEO, Kim Jin-woo. Kim, now 63, is not your average tech entrepreneur—his journey began as a professor, but a fascination with artificial intelligence and a desire to help people led him down a new path.
"In 2016, when the match between Lee Sedol and AlphaGo made headlines, I started to wonder how AI could truly help people," Kim recalled in a recent interview, as reported by Chosun Ilbo. "Healthcare seemed the most urgent field, so even though I had ten years left until retirement, I decided it was the perfect time to start something new." That December, Kim launched HAII—short for Human and AI Interaction—dedicating the company to digital therapeutics, a field where software, not drugs, treats disease.
HAII’s first product, AlzGuard, was born out of a simple but profound need: making dementia screening more accessible and less expensive. Traditional cognitive assessments could cost hundreds of thousands of won and required long waits. AlzGuard, by contrast, is a conversational agent built into KakaoTalk, South Korea’s ubiquitous messaging app. It engages elderly users in dialogue, subtly monitoring for signs of mild cognitive impairment and providing cognitive training. The innovation quickly attracted attention, leading to a five-year exclusive contract in 2021 with the Korean branch of a major Japanese pharmaceutical company, according to Chosun Ilbo.
But HAII didn’t stop there. Over the past few years, the company has rolled out a suite of digital therapeutics, each powered by cutting-edge digital biomarker technology. The four flagship products are Enzylax for mental health, AlzGuard for dementia, Lipich for stroke, and Rehap for sarcopenia. The secret sauce? Remote Photoplethysmogram (RPPG) sensors that use a smartphone’s camera to detect physiological signals—like heart rate—by simply filming a user’s face. "With RPPG, we can pick up tiny changes in skin color that occur with each heartbeat, something invisible to the naked eye," Kim explained.
What about accuracy? That’s a question many skeptics have asked. Kim is quick to point out that HAII’s products undergo rigorous validation: "We check if the sensor gives consistent readings, compare it to professional medical devices, and see how well it matches diagnoses from medical specialists. Every step requires approval from the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety." It’s a process that takes about three years from concept to launch.
Enzylax, the company’s mental health monitoring and intervention tool, is a testament to HAII’s commitment to clinical rigor. During the COVID-19 pandemic, HAII managed to recruit 96 participants in just six months for a 10-week clinical trial, despite the challenges of the era. The results were compelling: those using Enzylax showed improved scores for generalized anxiety disorder compared to control groups. By 2025, Enzylax had secured regulatory approval, and in 2026, it received a new medical technology evaluation exemption, making it available for sale.
The treatment process itself is uniquely digital. Enzylax uses digital biomarkers to detect a user’s emotional state, then delivers AI-generated, personalized voice scripts for therapy. Users read these scripts aloud and listen to their own recordings—sometimes with their voices slightly altered by AI to make the experience more comfortable. "Both the scripts and the voice modulation are handled by AI," Kim noted, highlighting how technology can make therapy more approachable for those who might otherwise shy away.
This wave of innovation isn’t happening in a vacuum. Another breakthrough, reported by Medical Observer on April 16, 2026, comes from a collaboration between the Korea Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) and Korea University Anam Hospital. Their research team, led by Professor Cho Hyun-chul and Senior Researcher Kim Ah-young, developed a digital phenotyping model to detect high-risk depression and anxiety using only smartphone sensor data and brief self-reports—no wearable devices required. Over a 28-day period, 455 adults were monitored using accelerometer and GPS data, combined with daily mood check-ins.
The findings were striking: high-risk depression groups had a weekday movement radius of less than 25 kilometers, compared to over 80 kilometers for low-risk individuals. They spent more time at home and exhibited more movement during sleep, with irregular and later sleep patterns. Machine learning models built from this data achieved impressive accuracy—an area under the curve (AUC) of up to 0.83 for depression and 0.86 for anxiety detection. Notably, combining sensor data with self-reports yielded the best results. "This study shows that smartphone-based digital phenotyping can be a powerful tool for early detection of depression and anxiety in everyday life," Professor Cho said. He added that, when combined with just-in-time adaptive intervention models, this approach could enable real-time, personalized mental health management.
The research, published in Internet Interventions, the journal of the International Society for Research on Internet Interventions (ISRII), signals a new era in which mental health assessment and intervention are woven seamlessly into daily routines. For HAII, this broader trend is both validation and inspiration. The company’s partnership with the Daegu Metropolitan Office of Education, ongoing since 2021, aims to foster healthy self-regulation habits in students from elementary through high school, helping them cope with academic and social stress. In 2024, HAII’s revenue reached 500 to 600 million KRW, but Kim insists the real prize is the data: over 1.5 million cumulative digital biomarker records, fueling ever more precise and personalized interventions.
Kim’s own routine reflects his belief in balance. He spends four days a week at HAII, one day teaching at Yonsei University, and two days farming in the countryside. "After a day in the fields, my stress scores are always at their best," he shared, hinting at the importance of holistic well-being even in a digital world.
Looking ahead, HAII is embarking on what Kim calls the "Moonshot Project": developing non-invasive digital therapeutics for diabetes, cholesterol, and arteriosclerosis. It’s an ambitious, long-term vision—one some might call quixotic. Kim just laughs. "Some say it’s a fool’s errand, but I see it as a challenge worth pursuing for as long as I’m able."
With smartphone-based digital phenotyping and digital therapeutics gaining traction, South Korea is quietly rewriting the rules of mental health care. As technology and empathy converge, the promise of early detection and real-time support is moving from science fiction to everyday reality—one smartphone at a time.