• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2016.05a
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• pp.560-563
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• 2016

The changes in the medical and healthcare are started from the digital technology. The new field of digital healthcare has started fused with existing healthcare, medical technology, and digital technology. It can increase the service effect and reduce healthcare costs by applying ICT skills such as ICBM(Internet of Things, Cloud, Big data and Mobile), artificial intelligence, robotics, virtual, augmented reality, and wearable devices to healthcare services including healthcare, disease management. Recently there has been grafted an artificial intelligence technologies such as AlphaGo of Google and Watson of IBM onto the healthcare area. In this study, we analyze the main technology, ecosystem, platforms for digital healthcare, and lastly future changes in health care services and issues of digital healthcare.

• Journal of information and communication convergence engineering
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.337-342
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• 2012

The medical industries are integrated with information technology with mobile devices and wireless communication. The advent of mobile healthcare systems can benefit patients and hospitals, by not only providing better quality of patient care, but also by reducing administrative and medical costs for both patients and hospitals. Security issues present an interesting research topic in wireless and pervasive healthcare networks. As information technology is developed, many organizations such as government agencies, public institutions, and corporations have employed an information system to enhance the efficiency of their work processes. For the past few years, healthcare organizations throughout the world have been adopting health information systems (HIS) based on the wireless network infrastructure. As a part of the wireless network, a mobile agent has been employed at a large scale in hospitals due to its outstanding mobility. Several vulnerabilities and security requirements related to mobile devices should be considered in implementing mobile services in the hospital environment. Secure authentication and protocols with a mobile agent for applying ubiquitous sensor networks in a healthcare system environment is proposed and analyzed in this paper.

• International Area Studies Review
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.239-267
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• 2009

Investment in health through an array of public health policies will lead to improvement of health at all levels, and the improved health can reduce the socioeconomic costs incurred with diseases. And finally, with reduced healthcare costs associated with diseases and health problems, economy will be able to achieve economic growth and development. Using simultaneous equations model, this study aims to identify this possible channel from public health policies to economic growth. Specifically, the policy effect is investigated on a basis of main disease groups and aging groups. The public health policies are proved to reduce healthcare costs related with disease groups including respiratory, digestive, circulative, and infectious disease, and with all age groups except 20~39 group. And the reduced healthcare costs have shown to increase the real gross domestic products in those group above.

• International Journal of Contents
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.14-20
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• 2017

The purpose of this study was to investigate the association of obesity with medical care use and costs according to overall diseases, cerebrovascular diseases (CVD), ischemic heart disease (IHD), hypertension (HTN) and diabetes mellitus (DM). The final sample was a group of persons who were free of diseases mentioned above and were not underweight. Their baseline screening program data and health insurance contribution data were connected with a 7-year medical claim database. The participants were classified according to their baseline BMI into normal, overweight, obese, and severely obese groups. Given the disease type, the total costs of DM showed the largest difference in each obesity group in both males and females. Also, the pharmacy costs for DM were more relevant than any other type of service to the obesity level. Considering the high prevalence of obesity and the relevantly increased medical care use and costs, there is a need for reduction in medical costs through obesity prevention efforts.

• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.1-16
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• 2008

According to Myers (1984) and Myers and Majluf(1984), there exists a financial hierarchy from internal to external financing, from long-tenn debt to equity, due to information costs. The purpose of this study is to assess the profit-making corporation of healthcare institutions. Data was collected from 130 hospital presidents and financial managers. We analysed the frequency and one way ANOVA by SPSS Windows 14.0K. The major findings of the study were as follows: We found that the priorities which a healthcare institutions financing were internal financial, other allowance, a credit loan, a security loan, and a lease through this study. The priorities which a healthcare institutions raised the capital differed as to the number of beds and revenues. The priorities were no difference from ownership, location and an annual business.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.1295-1301
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• 2015

Background: Cancer imposes a significant economic burden on individuals, families and society. The purpose of this study was to estimate the economic burden of cancer using the healthcare claims and cancer registry data in Korea in 2009. Materials and Methods: The economic burden of cancer was estimated using the prevalence data where patients were identified in the Korean Central Cancer Registry. We estimated the medical, non-medical, morbidity and mortality cost due to lost productivity. Medical costs were calculated using the healthcare claims data obtained from the Korean National Health Insurance (KNHI) Corporation. Non-medical costs included the cost of transportation to visit health providers, costs associated with caregiving for cancer patients, and costs for complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). Data acquired from the Korean National Statistics Office and Ministry of Labor were used to calculate the life expectancy at the time of death, age- and gender-specific wages on average, adjusted for unemployment and labor force participation rate. Sensitivity analysis was performed to derive the current value of foregone future earnings due to premature death, discounted at 3% and 5%. Results: In 2009, estimated total economic cost of cancer amounted to $17.3 billion at a 3% discount rate. Medical care accounted for 28.3% of total costs, followed by non-medical (17.2%), morbidity (24.2%) and mortality (30.3%) costs. Conclusions: Given that the direct medical cost sharply increased over the last decade, we must strive to construct a sustainable health care system that provides better care while lowering the cost. In addition, a comprehensive cancer survivorship policy aimed at lower caregiving cost and higher rate of return to work has become more important than previously considered.

• 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 Food Hygiene and Safety
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.68-76
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• 2021

Foodborne outbreaks frequently occur worldwide and result in huge economic losses. It is the therefore important to estimate the costs associated with foodborne diseases to minimize the economic damage. At the same time, it is difficult to accurately estimate the economic loss from foodborne disease due to a wide variety of cost components. In Korea, there are a limited number of analytical studies attempting to estimate such costs. In this study we investigated the components of economic cost used in foreign countries to better estimate the cost of foodborne disease in Korea. Seven recent studies investigated the cost components used to estimate the cost of foodborne disease in humans. This study categorized the economic loss into four types of cost: direct costs, indirect costs, food business costs, and government administration costs. The healthcare costs most often included were medical (outpatient) and hospital costs (inpatient). However, these cost components should be selected according to the systems and budgets of medical services by country. For non-healthcare costs, several other studies considered transportation costs to the hospital as an exception to the cost of inpatient care. So, further discussion is needed on whether to consider inpatient care costs. Among the indirect costs, premature mortality, lost productivity, lost leisure time, and lost quality of life/pain, grief and suffering costs were considered, but the opportunity costs for hospital visits were not considered in any of the above studies. As with healthcare costs, government administration costs should also be considered appropriate cost components due to the difference in government budget systems, for example. Our findings will provide fundamental information for economic analysis associated with foodborne diseases to improve food safety policy in Korea.

• The Korean Society of Law and Medicine
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.175-209
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• 2019

The bundled discounting which the dominant undertakings engage in is problematic in terms of competition restraint. Bundled discounts generally benefit not only buyers but also sellers. Specifically, bundled discounts usually costs a firm less to sell multiple products. In addition, Bundled discounts always provide some immediate consumer benefit in the form of lower prices. Therefore, competition authorities and courts should not be too quick to condemn bundled discounts and apply the neutral and objective standard in bundled discounting cases. Cascade Health v. Peacehealth decision starts ruling from this prerequisite. This decision pointed out that the dominant undertaking can exclude rivals through bundled discounting without pricing its products below its cost when rivals do not sell as great a number of product lines. So bundled discounting may have the anticompetitive impact by excluding less diversified but more efficient producers. This decision did not adopt Lepage case's standard which does not require the court to consider whether the competitor was at least as efficient of a producer as the bundled discounter. Instead of that, based on cost based approach, this decision said that the exclusionary element can not be satisfied unless the discounts result in prices that are below an appropriate measures of the defendant's costs. By adopting a discount attribution standard, this decision said that the full amount of the discounts should be allocated to the competitive products. As the seller can easily ascertain its own prices and costs of production and calculate whether its discounting practices exclude competitors, not the competitor's costs but the dominant undertaking's costs should be considered in applying discount attribution standard. This case deals with bundled discounting practice of multiple healthcare services by the dominant undertaking in healthcare market. Under the Korean healthcare system and public health insurance system, the price competition primarily exists in non-medical care benefits because public healthcare insurance in Korea is in combination with the compulsory medical care institution system. The cases that Monopoly Regulation and Fair Trade Law deals with, such as cartel and the abuse of monopoly power, also mainly exist in non-medical care benefits. The dominant undertaking's exclusionary bundled discounting in Korean healthcare markets may be practiced in the contracts between the dominant undertaking and private insurance companies with regards to non-medical care benefits.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.42 no.4
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• pp.243-250
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• 2009

Objectives : The purposes of this study is to estimate the cost of cancer care after its diagnosis and to identify factors that can influence the cost of cancer care. Methods : The study subjects were patients with an initial diagnosis one of four selected tumors and had their first two-years of cancer care at a national cancer center. The data were obtained from medical records and patient surveys. We classified cancer care costs into medical and nonmedical costs, and each cost was analyzed for burden type, medical service, and cancer stage according to cancer types. Factors affecting cancer care costs for the initial phase included demographic variables, socioeconomic status and clinical variables. Results : Cancer care costs for the initial year following diagnosis were higher than the costs for the following successive year after diagnosis. Lung cancer (25,648,000 won) had higher costs than the other three cancer types. Of the total costs, patent burden was more than 50% and medical costs accounted for more than 60%. Inpatient costs accounted for more than 60% of the medical costs for stomach and liver cancer in the initial phase. Care for latestage cancer was more expensive than care for early-stage cancer. Nonmedical costs were estimated to be between 4,500,000 to 6,000,000 won with expenses for the caregiver being the highest. The factors affecting cancer care costs were treatment type and cancer stage. Conclusions : The cancer care costs after diagnosis are substantial and vary by cancer site, cancer stage and treatment type. It is useful for policy makers and researchers to identify tumor-specific medical and nonmedical costs. The effort to reduce cancer costs and early detection for cancer can reduce the burden to society and improve quality of life for the cancer patients.