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"The market surrounding children's growth has been fragmented for a long time. I believed that we needed 'team doctors'—experts from multiple fields who look at one child together—rather than exercise, nutrition, and psychology experts working separately."
Bae Yoon-jung, CEO of With Doctors, made the remarks in a recent interview with Unicorn Factory, MoneyToday's startup-focused media platform. She described the company as "Korea's only growth management center offering personalized solutions that comprehensively address exercise, nutrition, sleep, psychology and lifestyle habits."
Founded in 2024, With Doctors is a digital healthcare startup that applies a team-based approach, bringing together specialists in exercise, nutrition and psychology to manage the growth of children and adolescents. The company assesses multiple factors, including body alignment, physical fitness, nutrition, sleep, stress and lifestyle habits, to identify factors that may hinder each child's growth and design a personalized management program.
Based on initial assessment results, specialists from different fields develop an integrated care plan. Exercise sessions are held twice a week, while psychological and nutritional support is provided regularly. Periodic assessments are conducted to track changes.
The process can also uncover issues parents may not have recognized, such as high stress levels, nutritional imbalances or problems with body alignment.
"To maximize a child's growth, we need to look at everything together, including whether the child eats and sleeps well, how much stress they experience and whether their bones are growing in proper alignment," Bae said.
"Every child differs in genetic traits, food preferences, activity levels, sleep patterns and stress levels," she added. "The key to healthy growth is to reduce factors that hinder development and help each child reach their full potential."
Managing Children Receiving Growth Hormone…Creating Synergy with Hospitals
One of WithDoctors' main customer groups is children receiving growth hormone therapy. According to Bae, even if growth hormone is used to promote height growth, the state of the musculoskeletal system, including muscles and ligaments that support this, as well as nutrition and sleep, must be managed together.
Rather than intervening in the hospital's treatment itself, WithDoctors continuously monitors changes in the child's body. It conducts muscle strengthening and posture correction exercises tailored to the state of the musculoskeletal system, while managing nutrition, sleep, and stress concurrently.
Bae said, "Even if a child receives growth hormone injections, muscles and ligands must be strengthened, and nutrition and sleep must be managed together," adding, "It is not a model that opposes hospitals; rather, it takes on the area of daily management that hospitals find difficult to handle, so it can produce sufficient synergy."
The Limits of 'Online Healthcare' Learned from First Startup
WithDoctors' business model also incorporates Bae's first startup experience. Majoring in sports medicine, Bae worked as a professor at university, researching athletes, injuries, and cardiac rehabilitation. Later, to connect the specialized knowledge accumulated in her research lab with actual health management services, she founded digital healthcare company Mediplex Solution.
After successfully operating an online health management service for cancer patients and others, she achieved an exit in 2021 by selling the company to HD Hyundai. However, through this process, she also felt the limitations of online healthcare. While online platforms make it easy to provide services to many users, they lack direct contact points with experts, making it difficult to drive sustained participation and lifestyle changes.
In her second startup, she chose a method combining close management by offline experts with digital technology, based on this experience. This was to simultaneously solve the problems that online-only approaches make continuous management difficult, while offline-only operations can lead to varying service quality depending on individual experts' experience and capabilities.
Bae said, "Every time a new center is opened, experts must not manage things in different ways," adding, "We focused on improving work efficiency and standardizing service quality."
To this end, WithDoctors has spent about two years since its establishment at a company-affiliated research institute in Hanam, Gyeonggi Province, focusing on standardizing and digitizing the entire process from testing to result analysis and individual management program design.
Its self-developed customer relationship management (CRM) system accumulates lifestyle and health habit questionnaires and various test results, which are used for growth status analysis and formulating individual management plans. This serves as a foundation for maintaining consistent service quality even as the number of centers increases.
Collecting Data on 210 Items…"Will Build AI Growth Prediction Model"
On September 18 last year, the company opened a center in Seoul Daechi-dong, moving to expand its business. This location was chosen considering that it is an area densely packed with academies, allowing children to receive Seong (Minister)ry between their academy schedules. The company plans to add centers in other education-facility-dense areas matching children's routes, such as Seocho and Mokdong, and expand through license and franchise formats.
Along with center expansion, the asset being watched for the medium-to-long term is children's "growth data." It collects data on over 210 items, including physical condition, exercise, nutrition, psychology, and lifestyle habits, from one child, and accumulates changes through repeated testing. This includes not only height and weight but also joint range of motion, muscle strength, gait patterns, nutritional intake, sleep, and stress.
WithDoctors plans to develop a "dynamic growth prediction model" by training AI on longitudinal data of 10,000 to 20,000 people in the future. This method does not stop at presenting predicted height based on indicators measured once; it continuously updates the expected growth trajectory by reflecting subsequent changes in exercise, nutrition, sleep, and stress. Ultimately, the vision is to develop a platform where AI (artificial intelligence) predicts growth potential, analyzes individual growth-inhibiting factors, and even proposes management plans.
Bae said, "If one child maintains good lifestyle habits while another does not, their expected final height should also be different," adding, "We will create an AI growth prediction model that continuously shows new growth potential according to the child's changes, rather than stopping at a single prediction."
[MoneyToday Startup Media Platform Unicorn Factory]
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