• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.39 no.1
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• pp.1-8
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• 2016

Patent management activities are considered to play a key role for technology-based firms under the recent knowledge-based economies. This is because intellectual property, including patents, can act as a system for continuous profit generation by protecting firms' products, processes and services. In Korea, healthcare industry is now regarded as one of the promising next generation industries. Despite the promise of healthcare industry, Korean healthcare product manufacturers are faced with turbulent business changes, such as market opening. Even though there are various industrial studies on the effect of patent management activities on firm outcome, previous studies have hardly paid attention to Korean healthcare product manufacturing firms. For this reason, this study identifies the effect of patent management activities, such as patenting activeness, technical excellence and cooperation degree, on firm outcomes, including financial profitability and firm growth, with respect to the Korean healthcare product manufacturers. In this study, we located 86 Korean healthcare manufacturing firms from KORCHAMBIZ and DART, and then collected the data of their patenting activities and outcomes between 2001 and 2013. By applying factor analysis and regression analysis, our empirical study found that firms' patenting activeness has the significant positive relationship on firms' financial profitability, and firms' patenting activeness and technical excellence have the significant positive relationship on firms' financial growth. Our study is an initial attempt to identify the effect of patent management activities on firm outcome within Korean healthcare product manufacturing industry, and thus its results can be used as the basis to formulate national policies for Korean healthcare product industry.

• The Journal of the Korean dental association
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• v.58 no.9
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• pp.536-545
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• 2020

In preparing for the era of Korean reunification, it is essential to consider the integration of medical systems and human resources. While Korean dental practitioners are expanding their activities in various fields both domestically and internationally, there are many restrictions on the activities for improving the health of North Korean people due to political and historical reasons even nowadays. In addition, there is little is known about the current state of dental health in North Korea. We analyzed the reports published by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Ministry of Public Health of North Korea prepared individually or in cooperation, and investigated the current status of the health care strategy applied to the dental field by conducting a full investigation of the 2018 『Rodong』newspaper. Based on the above, we tried to grasp the major health care strategies in North Korea and their application. Understanding the direction and status of North Korea's health care system would be an important cornerstone for international cooperation and practical activities to improve oral health care of North Koreans in the future. And there is a need that studies should be steadily conducted in various methods to overcome the heterogeneity of the two Koreas in the long-term perspective.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.470-478
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• 2020

In this paper, a theoretical model that separates one single conversion factor into two conversion factors for both outpatients and inpatients is introduced. By using hypothetical numbers, two conversion factors and an adjustment factor were calculated. The major implications are as follows. Firstly, by introducing two conversion factors, a minimum incentive mechanism for admitting outpatients to a clinic and high risk inpatients to a hospital was installed. Secondly, the introduction of two conversion factors decreased the drive to admit outpatients to a hospital by reducing the economic benefits for the hospital. Thirdly, it is possible to make explicit contracts for several factors rather than a single conversion factor, so that it can be used as an appropriate management tool for rapidly increasing medical expenses. Finally, this research can be used to set up policy tools to establish a proper healthcare delivery system in Korea by inducing behavioral changes in healthcare institutions.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.340-350
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• 2016

The Medical Service Act of Korea describes a clinic as providing services primarily to outpatients, while a large general hospital provides specialized medical services requiring a high level of expertise for treating serious diseases. The portion of medical revenue for clinics has been decreasing gradually compared with large hospitals. This article proposes two fundamental medical policies to fix the distorted medical delivery system of Korea. Firstly, uniform additional medical remuneration rates based on the type of medial institution should be divided into outpatient additional rates and inpatient additional rates. Secondly, to normalize the function of clinics and large general hospitals, an outpatient medical target budget system should be introduced. Finally, to properly implement the proposal, it is important to establish healthcare policy-making governance. The success of policy implementation strongly depends on the participation and incentives of the government, suppliers, and patients. Healthcare policy-making governance must be designed to encompass this fact and improve quality of care.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.10 no.9
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• pp.2354-2360
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• 2009

Healthcare is a field where ubiquitous computing is most widely used. We propose a mining-based healthcare multi-agent system for ubiquitous computing environments. This proposed scheme select diagnosis patterns using mining in the real-time biosignal data obtained from a patient's body. In addition, we classify them into normal, emergency and be ready for an emergency. This proposed scheme can deal with the enormous quantity of real-time sensing data and performs analysis and comparison between the data of patient's history and the real-time sensory data. We separate Association rule exploration into two data groups: one is the existing enormous quantity of medical history data. The other group is real-time sensory data which is collected from sensors measuring body temperature, blood pressure, pulse. Proposed system has advantage that can handle urgent situation in the far away area from hospital through PDA and mobile device. In addition, by monitoring condition of patient in a real time base, it shortens time and expense and supports medical service efficiently.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.17 no.12
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• pp.594-602
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• 2016

This study was carried out to suggest hospital referral system improvements based on health insurance subscriber perceptions of the delivery of healthcare. Health insurance subscriber outpatients (n = 207) referred from a stage 1 medical institution to the S university hospital located in Seoul responded to the study survey. The study's item reliability is reliable as the Cronbach's alpha coefficient was greater than 0.7. This study results showed that 5.9% of patients were referred from a higher stage hospital to a same stage hospital. The main factor attracting patients to S university hospital were physician reputation and confidence. The highest factor ($4.40{\pm}.92$) was xxxx. In addition, survey respondents reported that the concentration of patients in extra-large hospitals in Seoul ($4.24{\pm}.97$) was an important issue, and the issue with the highest priority for improvement ($4.05{\pm}1.02$). A positive correlation was detected between the recognition and improvement of delivery of healthcare (p < 0.01). Based on the results, we suggest that improvements in the delivery of healthcare should focus on patients rather than suppliers of national health insurance or other insurers. Keywords: delivery of healthcare, health services accessibility, national health insurance, tertiary care centers, hospital referral.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.1146-1152
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• 2010

The Korean healthcare industry is rapidly changing along with the competition among hospitals. In the past, hospitals could make profit without designing competitive management strategies. Thus, they did not find importance in listening to customers' voices and identifying their wants. However, nowadays, the increasingly intense competition is encouraging hospitals to seriously consider competitive management strategies and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) activities to gain a competitive advantage and prosper. It tries to compare the expected satisfaction with the satisfaction of out-patient and in-patient and analysis of VOC(Voice of Customer). This survey was done from 27th, April, 2009 to 8th May and each 100 in-patients and out-patients. The paired t-test and descriptive analysis was used to analysis between before and after satisfaction. The result, the replied out-patients were the highest of I.M department, 43% and in-patients, surgery and other department are the highest each 22.0%. Nurses kindness is statistical significant in out-patients. Doctor, Nurse and staff's kindness and rounding service was statistical significant in in-patients. Totally, the satisfaction was lower than expected satisfaction, so the medical care institutions should analyst detailed the patient's satisfaction by VOC.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.21 no.8
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• pp.160-169
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• 2020

This study was conducted to identify the linkage and cooperation experiences in public case-management services of visiting health care practitioners. Focus group interviews were conducted with three people in charge of providing visiting healthcare services in public health centers. A semi-structured interview questionnaire was developed in advance through discussions among researchers In response to the interview questions, study participants described in detail the success and failure factors associated with linkage and cooperation that they experienced while providing visiting healthcare services. The interview data were analyzed qualitatively to identify the main themes and sub-themes reflecting visiting nurses' experiences with linkage and cooperation. The three main themes were: 'Guidelines act as positive performance factors for community-based linkage and cooperation', 'Unstable employment and lack of an integrated system act as barriers to linkage and cooperation', and 'Necessary for multidimensional approach to promoting linkage and cooperation'. Based on these results, the authors propose the development of clear linkage and cooperation standards and procedures, thereby ensuring job security for visiting nurses. Moreover, an integrated information system should be developed and implemented.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.713-720
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• 2013

The objectives of this study are to identify whether the small area variation also exists in the oriental medicine and, if it exists, what causes, to expand our boundary of research interests on the small area variation observed at the western medicine toward the oriental medicine as one of the fundamental research foundations and to provide any fundamental findings from this study results to the healthcare politicians to promote consumer's rational behaviors for the use of healthcare. This study analyzed the health insurance claim data (2010, 2011) which were the patients of western medicine and the outpatients of the oriental medicine with the top 10 most frequent diseases and looked into the variation of healthcare utilization among the areas after grouping resident area into an 86-area category. The study result shows that the small area variation was also observed at the part of the oriental medicine in which the characteristics of patients critically affect the healthcare expenditure per visit day rather than those of providers and the characteristics of both patients and providers equally affect the healthcare expenditure per patient. Therefore, this study suggests that government set up healthcare policies on the standardization of oriental medicine to prevent its over-utilization and unmet need, enforcing the roles of oriental medicine in the markets, enhancing the appropriate health care utilization, and expanding provision and sharing the health care information to reduce unnecessary health care utilization.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.4021-4030
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• 2015

Pulse wave is the physiological responses through the autonomic nervous system such as ECG. It is relatively convenient because it can measure the signal just by applying a sensor on a finger. So, it can be usefully employed in the field of U-Healthcare. The objects of this study are acquiring the PPG (Photoplethysmography) one of the way of measuring the pulse waves in non-invasive way using the CMOS image sensor on a smartphone camera, developing the portable system judging stressful or not, and confirming the applicability in the field of u-Healthcare. PPG was acquired by using image data from smartphone camera without separate sensors and analyzed. Also, with that image signal data, HRV (Heart Rate Variability) and stress index were offered users by just using smartphone without separate host equipment. In addition, the reliability and accuracy of acquired data were improved by developing additional hardware device. From these experiments, we can confirm that measuring heart rate through the PPG, and the stress index for analysis the stress degree using the image of a smartphone camera are possible. In this study, we used a smartphone camera, not commercialized product or standardized sensor, so it has low resolution than those of using commercialized external sensor. However, despite this disadvantage, it can be usefully employed as the u-Healthcare device because it can obtain the promising data by developing additional external device for improvement reliability of result and optimization algorithm.