• Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics
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• v.60 no.5
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• pp.138-144
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• 2017

Purpose: Following legal reform in 2013, the annual number of asylum seekers entering South Korea has increased from 1,143 in 2012 to 5,711 in 2015. We interviewed six African refugee mothers of young children regarding their health needs and barriers to access maternal child health services. Methods: We recruited mothers who had visited a clinic for immigrants between July 2013 and August 2015. Participants were African refugee women, aged over 18 years, who had given birth in Korea within the previous 5 years and had come to Korea over a year before recruitment. Interview questions examined participants' experiences in pregnancy and childbirth and concerns regarding their child's health status. Initial data analysis involved all researchers' immersion in the entire collection of transcripts. We then noted recurrent topics and themes and identified similar issues. Results: At the time of giving birth, 5 participants were asylum seekers and one had undocumented status. The following barriers impeded their access to maternal child healthcare: socioeconomic factors (unstable social identity, low economic status, difficulty obtaining health insurance), language barriers (lack of linguistically appropriate health information, limited access to translation services), and cultural barriers (religious and cultural differences). Weak social support also hindered access to healthcare soon after migration; however, social links with the community emerged as a key coping strategy following settlement. Conclusion: We identified barriers to maternal and child healthcare and coping strategies among African refugee mothers in Korea. Future research should assess refugees' health status and improve health access and literacy among refugee mothers.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.17 no.9
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• pp.39-49
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• 2017

This was a qualitative study on medical aid patients to understand the cause and process of statistical difference of health service utilization between medical aid and health insurance patients. The main results were the following; 1) There was few overuse of health service in medical aid patients. The reason of heavy utilization was mainly due to the complicated disease. Some of them were considered to overuse physical therapy and oriental acupuncture. 2) In case of medical aid patients, medical cost was paid by their welfare benefit of government or by the support of family or neighbors. They usually could not adequately use the services of uninsured benefit or large hospitals due to the cost. Some patients just endured the pain. There was still discrimination for medical aid patients in some medical institutions. 3) The health officials and institutions did not provide sufficient information to medical aid patients about the policy of medical cost support. 4) Health policies, such as selective clinic system, medial aid case management, approval of extended care, were considered to contribute in preventing unnecessary use of health service. However, this might limit adequate use of medical aid service. In conclusion, there is little evidence of overuse of health service for medical aid patients, which is different from the previous studies. A new plan is necessary, because medical aid patients thought that the necessary health service was not accessible to them.

• The Korean Journal of Health Service Management
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.145-154
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• 2016

Objectives : Because people have increasingly more interest in their quality of life, the anti-aging industry has grown worldwide. The purpose of this study is to suggest strategies for galvanizing the anti-aging industry in Korea. Methods : To accomplish this aim, we explored the definition, classification, problem and activating strategies of the anti-aging industry through a systematic review. Results : From the results, the following suggestions are given: planning a national strategy to galvanize the anti-aging industry, establishing an anti-aging research institute, developing a business model, developing an anti-aging cluster, statistics development and an information system related to anti-aging, training personnel, and legislation. Conclusions : The anti-aging industry has the potential to reduce health expenses through early intervention of diseases due to aging and through activation of the national economy by win-win growth of the industry related to aging. Therefore, understanding the anti-aging industry as well as political support is critical.

• Journal of Korea Society of Industrial Information Systems
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.15-24
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• 2014

In 2005, there was a partial revision of the Act on the Promotion of Education for the Handicapped people, so that students with health impairments would be able to receive special education support. Since the amendment of the bill, to support them classified into weak people in education, education support systems have been proposed and settled so that they may receive the support for free. According to the pre-study, after the amendment of this bill, there has been many studies on the form of educational service to support them, and recently, there have been a lot of researches to investigate their satisfaction with the current services and draw its problems. And yet these studies have been carried out by the preceeding researchers at the drawing of problems, but have a limitation to present fundamental countermeasures to the problems. Therefore, this study attempted to understand the meaning of health impairment through the pre-study and investigate the forms of the services currently supporting them and analyze the problem of each service. In addition, to solve the identified problems, a new support system was proposed. In order to confirm the performance of the system, we design the user satisfaction survey composed of a Likert 5-point scale per each question, and to make the task, comparing stories and clapping for increasing quality of their subjective evaluation about the image and voice transmission when the user uses it. As a result, in the overall evaluation of the robot system, the average score of each question was recorded to 4.31 points, and through the two tasks, it was found that there were effective data transmission of image and voice.

• The Korean Journal of Health Service Management
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.133-145
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• 2011

The purpose of this study is to analyze the influence of external environment, organizational characteristics on informatization level in hospital settings, and to provide suggestions to improve the informatizaiton level of strategic information system of hospitals. In order to achieve study purpose, causal model was developed and empirically tested. Data were collected from 716 managers of 89 hospitals keeping information system in Busan and KyungNam Province using self-administered structured questionnaire. Major results of this study were as follows; First, among hospitals which had information training programs, informatization capacity was significantly higher. Moreover, informatization capacity was significantly varied by ownership type, institutional level, and number of beds of hospitals. Second, environmental uncertainty, intra-industry competition intensity, decision-making concentration, work standardization variables and perceived benefits were found to be significant affecting factors on informatization capacity as a result of path analysis. Third, support of top-management and perceived benefits were found to be significant affecting factors on informatization capability as a result of path analysis. Especially, informatization capability was positively affected by informatization capacity. Finally, perceived benefits was found to be significant affecting factors on informatization competency as a result of path analysis. Especially, informatization competency was positively affected by informatization capability.

• Convergence Security Journal
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• v.14 no.7
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• pp.75-84
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• 2014

The advancement in ubiquitous healthcare specifically in preventive healthcare can lead to longer life expectancy especially for the elderly patients. To aid in preventing premature loss of lives as well as lengthening life span, this research aims to implement the use of mobile and wireless sensor technology to improve the quality of life and lengthen life expectancy. The threats to privacy and security have received increasing attention as ubiquitous healthcare applications over the Internet become more prevalent, mobile and universal. Therefore, we propose Context-aware Service of U-Healthcare Application based Knowledge using Ontology in secure health information exchange. This research also applies ontology in secure information exchange to support knowledge base, context modeling, and context reasoning by applying the general application areas for ontologies to the domain of context in ubiquitous computing environments. This paper also demonstrates how knowledge base, context technologies, and mobile web services can help enhance the quality of services in preventive ubiquitous healthcare to elderly patients.

• Journal of Information Technology Services
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.105-119
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• 2018

The healthcare business is growing as a global core business because of the phenomenon of global aging, as well as in South Korea, skyrocketing health care costs accordingly, and changing the paradigm from treatment to the prevention-centered medical service. Especially, as the digital healthcare service stands out as a solution, major countries actively promote and support policies at the government level. Thus, this study will present attributes of a market-oriented service that would vitalize the digital healthcare service industry by investigating major attributes of the digital healthcare service. To analyze the relationships of the influences of attributes, this study used Interpretive Structural Modeling. As a result of literature research and ISM, this study can understand the eight basic attributes of the digital healthcare service (network scalability, context awareness, connection among information platforms, cost, trust, security, ease of use, usefulness) and analyze the relationships of the influences among the attributes. In addition, as this study finds some significant differences in Order Winner and Order Qualifier between the experts' group (security) and the users' group (trust, ease of use, usefulness), It provides meaningful implications for revitalization and promotion of digital healthcare service industry.

• Journal of Information Technology Services
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.95-114
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• 2023

Smart healthcare, combining ICT (Information and Communications Technologies) and medical technologies, has been rapidly emerging. Accordingly, its market has also increased as interest in disease prevention, management, and diagnosis grows due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, using mobile devices to support medical activities, mobile healthcare has been attracting attention as a leading service in the smart healthcare market. However, the intention to use mobile healthcare apps may vary depending on individual beliefs and attitudes. Many studies on the intention to use mobile healthcare apps have used the TAM (Technology Acceptance Model), but there is a lack of studies that have been verified from the perspective of users' health beliefs. This study aims to identify the factors that affect the intention to use mobile healthcare apps based on the HBM (Health Belief Model). Furthermore, it investigates how this influencing mechanism fluctuates based on the user's mHealth literacy, the ability to find and understand health information through mobile. This study contributes to the empirical examination of the intention to use mobile healthcare apps through the HBM. It also offers insights for app providers and public health officials to increase the use of mobile healthcare apps.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea TC
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• v.48 no.2
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• pp.29-35
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• 2011

PHR(Personal Health Record) to support the lifelong healthcare of their medical information to consumers anytime, anywhere can view and manage health information to help direct input can be defined as a service. The PHR is to provide services efficiently and PHR systems and health-related information systems should be integrated and linked. However, the current healthcare information systems field in order to meet the growing demand for healthcare construction and operation of various systems, and accordingly continues to increase budget for information, but the current system, although the association between a variety of system integration and linkage is being made. This paper proposes a Integrated information system on Healthcare based on Web service to solve problems mentioned above. SOA(Service Oriented Architecture) is a major method of integrating services on the Web. It enables new requirements to be added to existing systems without modification of legacy services, so it makes rapid adaption to varying business environment. Therefore, In this paper, PHR services based on SOA as a platform for the health care sector to design and implement an integrated information system by web services based PHR services for the construction of a new integrated information system is proving to be a suitable model.

• The Journal of Korean Medicine
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• v.28 no.3 s.71
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• pp.1-12
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• 2007

Objectives : The purpose of this study was to explore the perceptions of health promotion programmes using traditional Korean medicine among public health centre staff in charge of running such programmes. To do so, we examined and analysed the current situation of implementing the programmes in the public health centre. Methods : A survey was designed to collect information on perception of the health promotion programmes using traditional Korean medicine by public health centre staff in charge of running such programmes. The survey, using a structured questionnaire designed for this study, was conducted on 161 public health centre staff attending an annual meeting to presenting the results of activity evaluation related to public health programmes using traditional Korean medicine in public health centres. The participants were asked about the most successful programme, the benefits of the programmes, the positive aspects of the programmes, the most desirable outcomes of the programmes and so on. The data were analysed using SPSS system 12.0 for Windows. Results : Of the 161 questionnaires, 121 were analysed. The main findings of this research were as follows. Of the health promotion programmes using traditional Korean medicine implemented in public health centres, qigong and stroke preventive health promotion programmes were perceived as the most successful. The major benefits of the programmes were having merit for health promotion and expecting a positive performance outcome. The major positive aspects of the programmes for health promotion were cultivating community citizen's support and showing consistency between the philosophy of the programmes and the direction of existing health promotion programmes. The most desirable outcomes of the programmes were spreading community understanding of the programme and establishing an effective and unique health promotion model for implementing the programme. Two major causes of implementation difficulties were lack of material resources such as manpower, facility, and equipment, and methods of performance evaluation. One of the most urgent needs for activating the implementation of programmes was continuing financial and technical support from the central government. Conclusions : To promote the role of traditional Korean medicine in the public health sector in order to integrate traditional medicine into the public health system, government should develop some measures for solving the identified causes of implementation difficulties and coping with the most urgent needs for activating the implementation of programmes.