Handok adds DTx and AI to insomnia drug… expands sleep business

Links Stilnox with SleepQ and ChronoTrack…expands into pre- and post-treatment sleep care

14-day data replaces reliance on patient recall…also improves access to CBT-I

Converting the adoption base to actual prescriptions remains key

RE:SLEEP media session

Building adoption base is only first step; converting it into actual prescriptions remains…plans to expand into chronic disease management after sleep

Handok is expanding its sleep business beyond prescribing insomnia medication to measuring patients’ sleep and assessing treatment outcomes.

Rather than ending treatment with a prescription when a patient complains of insomnia, the company is adding digital cognitive behavioral therapy and artificial intelligence (AI)-based sleep analysis. In other words, the company seeks to bring the entire patient journey—from diagnosis and treatment to reassessment—into its business scope.

Handok unveiled the strategy at its RE:SLEEP media session held on the 9th.

Diagnosis that had been reliant on sleep diaries, treatment focused on drugs…connecting both ends of care

Handok focused on the fact that amid the rising the number of patients with insomnia, the treatment process remains fragmented.

According to figures presented by Handok based on data from the Health Insurance Review & Assessment Service, the number of patients with sleep disorders in Korea rose by about 26% over five years, from 1,037,396 in 2020 to 1,308,383 in 2024.

At the diagnostic stage, however, diagnosis still mainly relies on interviews or sleep diaries based on the patient's memory. Polysomnography can be considered when objective testing is needed, but it involves cost and accessibility burdens.

Treatment options also remain heavily weighted toward medication. Cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) is recommended as first-line treatment for chronic insomnia. Still, its use in clinical practice is limited by the time and specialist personnel required for counseling, as well as reimbursement issues. There has also been no convenient way to determine whether a patient’s sleep actually improved after treatment outside the clinic.

Handok has placed Stilnox, the insomnia treatment it has supplied since 2012, at the center of its strategy, positioning WELT’s digital medical device SleepQ and Asleep’s AI-based sleep analysis device ChronoTrack before and after treatment.

Before treatment, ChronoTrack assesses the patient’s sleep patterns. Without requiring a wearable device, ChronoTrack uses AI to analyze breathing sounds captured through a smartphone microphone. Over 14 days, it records sleep onset, time to fall asleep, nighttime awakenings, and final wake time, then transmits the results to a dashboard for healthcare professionals.

Joon-Ki Hong, Chief Technology Officer of Asleep, said, “In the past, we had to rely on patients' responses during interviews or sleep diaries. ChronoTrack automatically records sleep and turns it into medical data, functioning as a sleep gauge that allows objective comparison of changes before and after treatment.”

At the treatment stage, SleepQ is offered as an option alongside medication. SleepQ is designed to guide patients through a six-week CBT-I program via a smartphone application, including sleep restriction, stimulus control, and cognitive restructuring.

The program adjusts bedtime and wake-up time according to the patient’s actual sleep patterns and reduces the amount of time spent awake in bed. In effect, it brings CBT-I, which is difficult to provide sufficiently in hospitals, into patients’ daily lives.

Sung-jee Kang, CEO of Welt, said, “Even though clinicians were well aware that cognitive behavioral therapy benefits patients, it was not easy to deliver it in actual clinical practice. SleepQ turns scientific evidence that has not been fully utilized in clinical settings into a software-based product.”

After treatment, ChronoTrack is used to measure sleep again. Data collected at diagnosis are compared with post-treatment results to assess how medication or digital therapy has changed the patient’s sleep.

Yoon-mi Kim, Senior Vice President of Handok’s prescription drug business division, explained, “It is difficult for patients and healthcare professionals to know exactly when treatment is needed with medication alone. We considered the entire treatment cycle from the perspective that sleep status needs to be visible to use either medication or digital therapeutics appropriately.”

(From left) Yoon-mi Kim, Senior Vice President of Handok’s prescription drug business division; WELT CEO Sung-jee Kang; and Asleep CTO Joon-Ki Hong

Adoption alone will not drive prescriptions…clinical use and product integration are key

Handok has now established the basic framework for its sleep business, but converting product adoption into actual prescriptions and sustained use remains a challenge.

The number of cumulative SleepQ registrations with the National Evidence-based Healthcare Collaborating Agency surpassed 1,000 in July. However, adoption or registration by healthcare institutions does not necessarily translate directly into actual prescriptions.

Kang said, “Even if the product and treatment principles are available, patients first need to know about them before they are willing to use them, and clinicians also need to know the product before they can recommend it. Because prescriptions happen at the point where clinicians and patients meet, awareness needs to be raised on both sides.”

To reduce inconvenience in the prescribing process, Welt has created a way to use SleepQ separately from electronic medical records (EMRs). Patients can take a photo of their detailed medical expense statement through a mobile application, and AI reads the prescription information and initiates treatment.

Apart from bundling the three products into a single sleep business, further work would be required to integrate each product’s data in clinical practice. At the presentation, the companies did not disclose how or when SleepQ and ChronoTrack would be technically linked on a single platform.

To broaden the clinical reach of its digital business, Handok established a digital business division in 2024 and moved the organization under its prescription drug business division in April this year. The move reflects a strategy of combining digital healthcare with its existing sales and marketing capabilities rather than operating it as a separate new business.

Sleep is the first field in which Handok is applying this business model. After linking measurement, treatment and reassessment in insomnia, the company plans to expand the model and apply it to chronic diseases that require continuous management.

Kim said, “Sleep management is not the final goal of Handok’s digital healthcare business, but the beginning. After the measurement, treatment, and reassessment are validated in insomnia, we plan to expand the model into chronic disease management.”