Surgery completion does not signify the end of treatment. Continuous monitoring is crucial even after patients return home. However, self-rehabilitation is not easy for patients with mobility issues, and revisiting the hospital for simple progress checks can be burdensome. Medical staff also face limitations in real-time monitoring of patient condition changes or abnormal signs between outpatient visits every 3 to 6 months.


Recently, digital healthcare technology is bridging this gap. Esen Co., Ltd. is a healthcare startup that realizes rehabilitation monitoring and remote medical consultation using wearable devices and artificial intelligence (AI) technology. Its main solution, 'EsenCare,' is a gait analysis medical device that collects physical function test data to monitor patient conditions and supports customized home rehabilitation. Additionally, the remote medical consultation support system for brain diseases, 'MiriCare,' assists in managing patients' health and remote consultations after discharge. Esen aims to enable precise function tests, rehabilitation, and monitoring while patients continue their daily lives at home.

Focusing on Post-Discharge Management as Important as Medical Technology

Yoo Eui-sik, CEO of Esen, built his career as a researcher at a medical device company. From this experience, he confirmed that the level of medical technology in Korea is comparable to that of advanced countries, but realized that successful surgery alone does not guarantee complete recovery and that post-discharge management is important.

CEO Yoo stated, "After a successful surgery, there was no way for medical staff to monitor the patient's condition. Patients also find it difficult to consistently practice rehabilitation exercises at home after surgery," and revealed that he decided to establish Esen to fill this recovery gap. Esen's solution was born to connect patients' post-discharge periods with data. He emphasized, "The goal was to implement a system where patients can manage their recovery process anywhere and communicate in real-time based on data with the same precision as medical staff."

EsenCare Utilizes Esen Tracker Without the Need for a Laboratory


Esen provides two core services based on its key device, the 'Esen Tracker.' This wearable device is equipped with an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) sensor to measure physical data such as knee angle, walking speed, stride, and joint angle.

EsenCare is a function test and home rehabilitation monitoring solution developed using the Esen Tracker and gait analysis algorithm. By linking the tracker with a mobile app in the hospital, the patient's condition can be monitored in real-time. CEO Yoo stated, "It is differentiated by its simplicity without the need for a separate laboratory. Previously, fixed equipment like treadmills was required, reducing medical accessibility. In contrast, the Esen Tracker completes the test just by walking after wearing it," adding, "This improves medical staff efficiency and reduces the patient's mobility burden."

EsenCare is actively used not only for hospital tests but also for home rehabilitation. The app provides video-based rehabilitation exercise guides. Patients can perform different exercise routines weekly according to the recovery stages—initial, middle, and final—based on the hospital's rehabilitation protocol.


Esen maximized the accuracy and usability of data by integrating AI technology. By matching clinical data with sensor data based on AI, precise understanding of physical function changes is possible. CEO Yoo stated, "Walking is the sixth sense. Human movement data reflects five key areas: nerves, cognition, muscle strength, skeleton, and function," and "As data accumulates sufficiently and technology advances, we plan to expand the service area to prediction and prevention stages, identifying diseases through changes in movement patterns beyond diagnosis."

Objective data also aids in patient rehabilitation. CEO Yoo added, "Accurate gait analysis and function evaluation lead to rapid recovery. Data-based objective feedback allows patients to check their recovery status and motivates them for exercise." He continued, "In a joint clinical study with five major university hospitals in Korea involving 120 participants, the experimental group using EsenCare showed a walking speed increase of about three times after 12 weeks. The knee flexion angle improved 2.5 times more. Patient satisfaction was 92% 'very satisfied,' and medical staff reported a reduction in patient waiting time and weekly overtime by over 30% each."

MiriCare Provides Post-Discharge Health Management and Remote Consultation


MiriCare is a remote consultation support system for stroke patients. While EsenCare focuses on physical function measurement and rehabilitation, MiriCare specializes in collecting daily data and supporting remote consultations for stroke patients. Daily data such as vital signs, physical function changes, and surveys recorded by patients are comprehensively shared with medical staff.

Medical staff can systematically manage patients' daily health changes based on MiriCare. They can check results after treatment and Botox procedures or adjust prescribed medications according to bleeding and pain progress. Additionally, they provide counseling to alleviate patient and caregiver anxiety, offer precautionary guidance, and provide customized educational videos to aid recovery. The video consultation function also supports remote consultation as an auxiliary tool beyond phone contact. CEO Yoo emphasized, "The key is to fill the gap between face-to-face consultations. It particularly helps stroke patients with mobility issues who find it difficult to visit the hospital to detect abnormal signs early."

Service Expansion through Regulatory Sandbox... Aiming for Global Expansion

Founded in 2018, Esen currently provides its Class 1 medical device, EsenCare, to orthopedics, rehabilitation medicine, neurology, and otolaryngology departments in 15 university hospitals in Korea. It has registered and applied for 13 patents related to healthcare systems and completed KC certification and ISO certification for the Esen Tracker.


Esen has been conducting verification and development simultaneously with comprehensive support from the Seoul Hongneung Small and Medium Business Innovation District, including research and development consultation, prototype production, and regulatory sandbox. In particular, it is preparing to expand in line with the end of the regulatory sandbox for MiriCare. The remote consultation regulatory sandbox project for stroke patients, conducted with the Korea Institute of Science and Technology and Korea University Anam Hospital since 2023, was completed last March. This year, the regulatory sandbox was extended for two years, expanding the target disease to Parkinson's disease. CEO Yoo explained, "Esen's sensor technology is easy to verify high efficacy in diseases clearly distinguishable from normal ranges," and "We plan to expand into various diseases such as sarcopenia in the future."

He also stated, "Although regulations related to remote consultation have been relaxed, there are areas like drug delivery that have not been fully addressed due to safety issues. Esen will lead in verifying these regulatory areas and serve as a platform to collect objective data needed when revising laws in the future."

Esen is concretizing its roadmap for global market entry, using the domestic market as a stepping stone. It plans to secure competitiveness by obtaining U.S. FDA and European Conformity (CE) certifications, enabling immediate adoption in overseas markets. Additionally, expansion into Southeast Asian regions such as Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Vietnam is under consideration.

CEO Yoo emphasized, "Esen's ultimate goal is to transcend time and space constraints and predict diseases through insights into data-based movement, beyond simple recovery," and "We aim to lead the future of digital healthcare by providing shortened pain and rapid recovery to patients, efficiency to the medical system, and the value of disease prediction to society as a whole."

IT Donga Reporter Kim Ye-ji (yj@itdonga.com)

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