Recently, Mats Håkansson CEO of MVIC, travelled with a Swedish delegation to join the Nordic Health Summit 2026 – Japan and South Korea. The delegation was coordinated by Business Sweden and the Swedish Embassy in respective country. The purpose of the conference was to create relationships and partnerships between Swedish companies and Japanese and South Korean companies respectively.
Japan is the third largest pharmaceutical market in the world. The life science market has been fairly protected with regulatory demands (such as requirement for CT on Japanese patients) and a very decentralized market requiring large marketing and sales operations. The government has identified life sciences as an important future industry and is taking steps towards supporting more R&D and global collaboration.
South Korea is now the third‑largest pharmaceutical market in Asia, supported by strong government prioritisation of healthcare and a highly digitalised ecosystem. Korean pharmaceutical and biotech companies are actively integrating AI across R&D pipelines and expanding into new modalities through global collaboration.
Mats also had the pleasure of listening to a presentation given by the 2025 Nobel Prize winner in physiology or medicine, Shimon Sakaguchi (to the right in the picture).