Our Story
Cipherome was founded in Silicon Valley in 2015 by Professor Juhan Kim of Seoul National University's Biomedical Informatics Department, to work on pharmacogenomics: using human genomics and algorithms to make drug treatment safer and more effective.
In 2019, Cipherome started clinical studies with Stanford, Seoul National University Bundang Hospital and Leiden University Medical Center to validate its Drug Safety Score (DSS). The DSS uses artificial intelligence models to predict adverse drug reactions and treatment failures by combining genomic data with patient demographics, lab results and medical histories.
Working with genomic and clinical data from large biobanks such as the UK Biobank turned out to be harder than expected. Extracting, cleaning and organizing the data took more effort than the research itself, so we invested in our own data analysis pipelines. That work became COMPASS.
In 2021 we launched the first public version of COMPASS, built on our internal tool previously known as PGxAI, and opened it to other researchers. We have kept extending it since.
Our scope has grown beyond pharmacogenomics. We present research done on COMPASS at international conferences, make the case for a no-code environment where researchers spend their time on results rather than on Python or R, and teach educators and students about health data science.
In 2025 and 2026, COMPASS moved to studies across institutions. In July 2025 the International Health Data Space Initiative (IHDSI), led by the Luxembourg Institute of Health (LIH) and the National Cancer Center Korea, launched with NAVER Cloud, Okestro and Cipherome as technology partners. In 2026 COMPASS added federated analysis, where patient-level records stay with each data holder. In March 2026 LIH opened its Korea office in Goyang, and Goyang City, LIH and Cipherome signed a three-way MOU on international joint research and public health collaboration.
Our aim with COMPASS is simple: give researchers the tools to get from a question to an answer sooner, so that their work reaches patients sooner.
