A Rival Appears
Keep a straight face. Keep a straight face.
"Given the time constraints, I was planning to fold it into the final Q&A session at the end of the seminar. Some of the product-related explanations here on site are already part of the research discussion."
I answered as gently as I could.
"Huh? Then won't everyone here forget everything you just said?"
But this doctor didn’t seem interested in ending the exchange in any remotely normal way.
So I checked the presenter’s expression first.
Fortunately, he nodded and gestured for me to go ahead.
He looked like he had given up.
"Yes. Please ask your questions. Could someone hand the microphone to the gentleman over there?"
The staff, caught off guard by the sudden Q&A, scrambled around looking for the microphone.
A moment later, the man who received it looked me straight in the eye and said, "Hello. I'm Professor Bang Yeongi from the internal medicine department at Korea University Hospital. I enjoyed your presentation."
"Thank you."
"But there’s a similar competing product out there. They say its accuracy is higher than yours."
At that, everyone in the lecture hall wore confused expressions.
"Internally, we’ve already validated our product against competitors, and our results showed the highest performance. Which product are you referring to, and what lesion does it supposedly diagnose more accurately?"
"Well, it’s a company that got investment from JH. I don’t know the name. Shouldn’t TA know about the competition first?"
JH. JH again.
I gripped the microphone tightly, keeping my expression as composed as I could while I answered.
"Would it be all right if I give you that answer during the Q&A after the full seminar is over?"
"Why?"
"So I can give you a proper answer. And if you're curious about our product’s accuracy, you're always welcome to request a free demo. Please ask any of our staff in the back at any time."
The awkward Q&A ended in a muddle, and the professor who was supposed to continue the seminar finally stepped up looking a little flustered.
"Well, my research isn't about which AI it is, but about how much time can be saved across the workflow through AI."
He carried on with the presentation as if nothing had happened, but if I failed to answer properly during the Q&A, then any connection with that professor would be over for good.
"Seonghun hyung. Jaeyun. No, everyone. Get me the competing company’s promotional materials as fast as you can. A photo is fine too."
JH Medical.
If you’re going to play dirty, I’ll answer in kind.
"The competitor’s product? Then our product isn’t a copy, is it?"
"We’d have to tear apart the code to know for sure, but just because an AI analyzes X-rays doesn’t mean everything is a copy. I’ll verify that later."
I hadn’t thought a competitor would never appear at all.
Wherever there’s money to be smelled, it’s only natural for traders to swarm in.
Besides, this technology wasn’t some completely new invention that had been planned as the world’s first from the beginning.
But JH Medical suddenly having better performance than us?
That was hard to believe.
"Mr. Siwon. I sent the promotional materials by email."
"Thanks."
I looked over the brochure Jaeyun had obtained from a hospital with connections to us.
JHX AI.
The name alone made it obvious: this was an X-ray analysis AI company made by JH.
"Even the name is irritating."
The team members glanced at me from time to time as I muttered under my breath.
Probably because it had been a while since they’d seen me genuinely angry.
Still, no one thought I was overreacting.
"How could I not be angry?"
At least we’d confirmed that the professor who derailed our Q&A was someone on the JHX AI side.
And from the fact that he had boldly written a testimonial on the brochure, that much was clear.
But wasn’t it illegal for a doctor to endorse a product like that?
Comparative performance claims against competitors were illegal too.
And they’d even falsified the numbers.
"Seonghun, please check the brochure for legal violations."
"Yes. I can use the standards I found when we reviewed the last brochure, right?"
"Yes."
I didn’t have much time.
At best, fifty minutes.
Within that time, I had to get out of the trap.
"JH Medical isn’t some hole-in-the-wall operation. Why would they pull a stunt like this?"
Even Seonghun hyung didn’t seem to think highly of the thuggish behavior they were pulling.
Yoo Jiwon had already logged into the shared folder and started polishing the slides I’d made.
"Mr. Siwon, don’t worry about the design. Just make sure the content is right."
"Okay."
Ha Juwon, sitting beside us, silently gathered useful materials and sent them over.
They were rebuttal materials about the performance claims the competitor was making against us.
The other staff guarding the booth quietly didn’t look any happier.
They all had plenty they wanted to say and think, but there wasn’t time, so they kept it to themselves.
"All right, then. Please feel free to ask questions."
At the professor’s sudden, easygoing sign-off, our hands only moved faster.
Jiwon and I finalized the design, and Seonghun hyung added legal grounds and our product’s performance data in the appendix.
"Yes, Professor Bang Yeongi."
Just as we were wrapping up, a name I did not want to hear reached my ears again.
That professor was definitely going to ask about us, not about the research.
"No, we should know whether a product that’s presenting at our hospital is actually any good."
"You mean the part you mentioned earlier about TA Medical? How about we discuss that after we finish talking about this research?"
"I know there are professors who support TA Medical, but shouldn’t we also respect the opinions of those who have doubts about the research topic itself?"
While that uncomfortable exchange dragged on, we finished the slides.
"Representative Kim Siwon. Can you answer now?"
"Yes. I’ll answer quickly."
So I answered the slightly irritated professor with confidence and went up on stage.
Then I plugged a USB drive straight into the connected laptop and brought up the PPT.
"First, let me introduce JHX AI’s product, which you mentioned."
Calling it an introduction, I filled the presentation with the product brochure, blown up large across the entire slide deck.
Because both the front and back were laid bare, Professor Bang Yeongi’s testimonial took up a huge portion of the screen too.
He looked a little embarrassed at the sight, though he tried hard not to show it.
"First, this brochure contains a great many legally problematic elements, but among them I’d like to point out the parts that qualify as false or exaggerated advertising."
I boxed in all the illegal wording, including Professor Bang Yeongi’s testimonial, and marked the statutes they violated.
It wasn’t because I wanted the doctors in the room to read it carefully and be outraged.
I just wanted to show visually that most of the brochure was illegal and therefore not worth trusting.
And in the most eye-catching red, I highlighted the part that had irritated me most.
"Performance improved by more than 70% compared to competitors."
"It’s a phrase that doesn’t tell us whether they’re referring to accuracy, diagnostic speed, or something else entirely."
The doctors seated below all nodded.
Honestly, I was relieved the brochure was this flimsy.
"As for diagnostic time, the product claims a diagnosis time of 6.7 seconds. Then shall we check how many seconds our product actually takes in real time?"
I immediately opened the demo X-ray analysis program I always kept on the USB drive.
Then I ran the case image analysis right away.
"Yes. Even if you count as slowly as possible, it doesn’t take more than five seconds."
After running the analysis twice more, I closed the window.
"That kind of speed has already been demonstrated through this paper as well, so I won’t bother showing it again."
By then, the doctors watching the presentation already looked convinced.
An illegal brochure, the research we had just heard, the analysis speed demonstrated right in front of them.
Who would accept this situation as normal?
"As for the product’s accuracy, in addition to what I showed in the earlier presentation, our internal results are displayed on the screen here. If you’d like to run DICOM files you personally have on hand, please request a demo anytime. It’s free."
I usually avoided using the word free, but this time I used it because I genuinely wanted anyone and everyone to use it.
Professor Bang Yeongi’s expression had gone completely sour.
Still, I kept going, calmly explaining why our product was better than the competition.
"That concludes five minutes of introduction to our product, so I’d like to ask that the remaining time be used mainly for Q&A about the professor’s research. If you have any questions, please contact us using the business card at your seat."
When I finished, the professor who had been standing a little behind us applauded.
Then everyone in the seminar room joined in.
"Thank you for making me look good, Representative."
The professor, visibly pleased, took the microphone, and I bowed quietly before stepping down from the stage.
The look on Professor Bang Yeongi’s face as I descended was worth seeing.
He had written a testimonial for a ridiculous product and disrupted the seminar, yet gained nothing from it. That was about right.
[It looks like Professor Bang Yeongi is on the opposite faction from the professor speaking now, so he was trying to pick a fight. There was also political infighting inside Korea University Hospital.]
[So that’s why he did that?]
[There was probably politics involved in the process of introducing TA Medical’s product too. Looks like he was trying to make that competitor product stand out.]
As soon as I opened my laptop in my exhausted state, Badugi began rattling off an explanation of the situation.
[How do you even know all this?]
[I gathered scraps from online rumor mills everywhere. Just living up to the AI name.]
[Impressive.]
Hearing an answer I hadn’t expected, I let out a small laugh.
Only then did I feel some of the tension leave my body.
That was when the staff, who had been watching me nervously from the side, all rushed over.
"Mr. Siwon, are you all right?"
"Yes. Thank you all for helping."
"Still, the atmosphere completely flipped. Honestly, there were people whispering through the professor’s whole presentation earlier, but now everyone’s actually listening to him."
"The professor’s expression looks brighter too."
"It does."
The seminar, which had started off in a chaotic mess, fortunately ended in a much better atmosphere.
And as soon as it was over, the doctors swarmed toward us.
"By the way, what kinds of things does that AI detect?"
"Do you have any diagnostic products for ultrasound or other fields besides chest X-rays?"
"How long does the free demo period last?"
"There’s research on the speed, but has the accuracy already been studied too?"
We were all surrounded by doctors and started answering in earnest.
Of course, there were plenty of people who wanted to hear directly from me as the representative, so I barely had a moment to breathe.
Still, because everyone was in the process of leaving the seminar room, they asked one or two questions and moved on quickly.
Judging by the people clutching business cards tightly in their hands, it looked like we were going to be busy again before long.