Professor Sonntag contributed as an expert on artificial intelligence in medicine to the 24th German–Korean Forum, held in Eschborn from 2–4 September 2026.
The German–Korean Forum brings together representatives from politics, academia, industry and civil society to develop recommendations for strengthening bilateral cooperation between Germany and the Republic of Korea. The recommendations developed at the Forum are subsequently presented to the governments of both countries.
Professor Sonntag gave a talk “From the Algorithm to the Patient – A German–Korean Alliance for Trustworthy Medical AI”, on the validation of digital health solutions, hospital data and medical-device regulation. A central question was how Germany and Korea can cooperate to move medical AI from promising AI systems towards reliable and trustworthy use in clinical practice for patient care.

Based on the discussion, five areas were identified for closer German–Korean cooperation: common benchmarks with clinically meaningful evaluation criteria; cross-hospital validation across institutions, populations and clinical workflows; privacy-preserving data use, including federated approaches; human–AI evaluation covering decision quality, workload, trust, usability and safety; and regulatory dialogue on evidence requirements and lifecycle monitoring.
The recommendations of the working group contribute to the joint recommendations of the 24th German–Korean Forum, which are forwarded to the German Federal Government and to Chancellor Friedrich Merz, as well as to the Korean government and President Lee Jae-Myung. The expert discussion on trustworthy medical AI thus feeds directly into the bilateral policy dialogue between Germany and Korea.

The 24th German-Koran Forum in Eschborn, Germany (© Milton Arias)