SK Telecom is to buy a 49 percent stake in China’s Xi’an Tianlong Science and Technology Co, in a move that is in keeping with the South Korean mobile operator’s strategy of looking to build a mobile health business internationally.

The operator did not disclose the size of its investment in the Chinese firm whose website describes it as developing and supplying biotechnology systems, diagnostics products and biomedical research devices for laboratories.  As its second-largest shareholder, SK Telecom will participate in the management of Tianlong, it said in a statement. The vendor is based in Xi’an, the capital of Shaanxi province.

SK Telecom has previously been in discussions with Chinese hospitals to supply them with its health IT systems, so the current investment is not its first experience of the country’s healthcare sector. In addition, SK Telecom said earlier this year it was talking with mobile operators in Indonesia and Taiwan about offering the same solutions in their home markets too. SK Telecom also has plans to offer mobile health service domestically.