• Gut and Liver
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.615-622
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• 2018

Despite the well-proven, safe and effective therapies for hepatitis B infection, delivery of treatment remains a significant challenge in resource-poor settings. Geopolitical and economic restrictions present additional difficulties in providing care in North Korea. However, treatment of patients with chronic hepatitis B remains a top priority for both the North Korean Ministry of Public Health and international agencies working in North Korean hepatitis healthcare facilities. Working in partnership, a path was created to institute this much-needed program. A consortium of United States and Australian humanitarian non-governmental organizations along with generous individual and corporate donors working in concert with local and national health authorities have succeeded in establishing the first hepatitis B treatment program in North Korea. The essential elements of this program include renovation of existing hepatitis hospitals, access to antiviral medications, establishment of laboratory facilities, creation of medical documentation and record-keeping, training of local health care professionals, and quarterly visits by international volunteer physicians and laboratory experts. Management and treatment decisions are made bilaterally. To date, nearly 1,500 patients have been evaluated, and over 800 have been started on long-term antiviral therapy. It is envisioned that this program will eventually be managed and funded by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea Ministry of Public Health. This program's success demonstrates a potential model for delivery of antiviral therapy for patients suffering from hepatitis B in other developing countries.

• The Journal of Korean Society for School & Community Health Education
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.107-121
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• 2017

Objectives: Given that the expansion of smoking cessation regulations in Korea generates great demand for smoking cessation services, healthcare professionals should be up skilled to make an important contribution to tobacco control. This study was aimed to develop a smoking cessation education program for nursing students and to try to find possible ways to incorporate the smoking cessation education in their regular course program. Methods: One group pre- & post-test design was used. The subjects were 70 nursing students from two universities in S and D city. Subjects were participated in a four-hour smoking cessation education program developed for increasing knowledge, competency, and self-efficacy for smoking cessation counselling. Data were analysed with descriptives and paired t-tests. Results: The developed education program for smoking cessation counselling produced a substantial effects in terms of knowledge, competency, and especially for self-efficacy for smoking cessation counselling. Conclusions: Smoking cessation advices and support from health professionals are key aspects of a comprehensive approach to smoking cessation. Incorporating the smoking cessation education program developed in this study in the regular baccalaureate program for nursing students may help increase the involvement of nurses in cessation counseling upon graduation.

• Journal of the Korean Society of School Health
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.306-316
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• 2017

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the operational status and operational problems of health promoting model schools, particularly of the large-sized elementary schools in urban areas. Methods: The study analyzed the data of 14 large-sized elementary schools in urban areas selected from 85 health promoting model schools, an initiative led by the Ministry of Education from 2012 to 2014. Results: The study examined the operation process of health promoting schools in five stages; system development, needs survey & current status survey, school health policy development, program development & execution, and evaluation. In addition, the study discovered three key factors in operating health promoting schools and examined the status of each factor; connection with the curriculum, connection with the community, and consensus among members. Four problems were identified as operational problems: lack of research on faculty health issues, school physical environment and community resources, inadequate presentation of performance indicators, no close coordination in core task development and lack of linkage with the curriculum. Conclusion: It turned out the concept of health promoting school suggested by WHO was relatively faithfully realized in this study. Compared to small-sized elementary schools in rural areas, health promoting schools in this study showed better aspects overall. The connection with the community was good, but the connection with the curriculum was poor.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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• v.51 no.5
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• pp.573-584
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• 2021

Purpose: This study aimed to develop an untact visit service based on an application that can be utilized in the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) during COVID-19. Methods: This study adopted the double diamond process of service design comprising the discovery, defining, and development stages. Results: We developed an untact visit service based on an application that considered the child's status, schedule, photo, and video messages, and so on. Moreover, we derived a service flow regarding the required roles and the type of flow shown between each stakeholder. Conclusion: Considering the ongoing pandemic, the untact visit service is designed to increase rapport and participation of parents, share the child's information in real-time, and provide one-stop service without increasing healthcare providers' work. It will be a useful visit service that can be applied and evaluated in various hospital settings and the PICU.

• Journal of Platform Technology
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.18-23
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• 2021

As it develops into a hyper-connected society, the role of information and communication is greatly increasing. In the event of a communication disaster, it will cause a significant impact on social infrastructure, suspension of the national critical infrastructure services, and the lives of the people. In addition, the information communication sector needs systematic management to create an information communication environment that is safe from disasters because dependence on the information communication sector has increased rapidly as the industrial structure has advanced. In this paper, we analyzed the types and risks of disasters that may occur to the information communication infrastructure that play important roles in national critical infrastructure, such as information communications, finance, health and healthcare, for systematic management. In the event of a disaster in the information communication infrastructure, it is believed that it will have a significant impact on the national critical infrastructure service suspension and people's lives.

• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.99-110
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• 2021

Governments around the world are actively establishing strategies and initiatives to spread the use of artificial intelligence (AI), for AI is not a mere new technology, but is an innovative technology that brings about extensive changes in industrial and social structures and is a core engine that will lead the 4th Industrial Revolution. The South Korean government has also been paying attention to AI as a technology and tool for innovative growth, but its application to the industries is still rather sluggish. The government has prepared multifarious AI-related policies with the aim of constructing South Korea as an AI powerhouse, but there is no clear strategy on which detailed policies to implement first and which industries to apply AI preferentially. With these limitations of South Korea's AI policies in mind, this paper analyzed the priorities of industries in AI adoption and the priorities of AI-related national policies, using Delphi-AHP method for 30 top-level AI experts in South Korea. The results of analysis show that AI application is urgent and necessary in the fields of medical/healthcare, public and safety, and manufacturing, which seems to reflect the peak of the COVID-19 crisis in the second half of 2020 at the time of the investigation. And it turns out that policies related to AI talent cultivation, data, and R&D investment are important and urgent above all in order for organizations to apply AI. This suggests that strategies are required to focus limited national resources on these industries and policies first.

• Journal of Korean Public Health Nursing
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.224-238
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• 2021

Purpose: This study aimed to identify factors associated with the self-rated health of married immigrant women in South Korea. Methods: Data, collected in August 2018, were derived from the 2018 National Multicultural Family Survey. Study subjects were 9,230 married immigrant women. Data were analyzed using logistic regression. Results: Of the study subjects, 23.2% rated their health as poor. Results showed that individual factors (age, ethnic affiliation, duration in South Korea, and depressive symptoms); social and community networks (relationship with spouse, parenting efficacy, Korean proficiency, perceived discrimination, social support, and social activities); and living and working conditions (life satisfaction and unmet heath needs) were associated with health. Married immigrant women in their 50s or older, living in Korea for more than 15 years, experiencing depressive symptoms, low life satisfaction, and having unmet health needs were especially at high risk of poor health. Conclusion: More detailed health policy that considers age, length of stay, and country of origin. To prevent the rapidly deteriorating health of married immigrant women after middle age, mental health support should be given priority, and systematic improvement is needed to increase accessibility healthcare services.

• The Journal of Korean Physical Therapy
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• v.34 no.5
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• pp.224-233
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• 2022

Purpose: In Japan, the Long-Term Care Insurance Act has stipulated visiting rehabilitation since 2000. This study aimed to identify the actual conditions of visiting rehabilitation in Japan through a literature review of reports published by the Japanese government. Methods: This literature review was conducted on eight articles among various government reports on the topic of the actual conditions of visiting rehabilitation. These reports were published by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare of Japan based on their own investigations or reports from an external agency entrusted with the task, and were issued between 2000 and 2021. Results: The characteristics of the visiting rehabilitation offices, their number, manpower allocation, the number of users, and their visits to each office were identified. Also, the characteristics of the users, number of users, age and required degree of long-term care, causative disease, and required medical care were identified. To evaluate the actual status of the visiting rehabilitation service, the service use time, frequency, period of use, intervention by doctors and the degree of such intervention, therapist's service content, visitors' address before the use of the service, reason, and timing of the service introduction, evaluation of the service effectiveness, combination of services and transfer destination after termination, and status after service termination were checked. Conclusion: Based on the Japanese experience where visiting rehabilitation was introduced and applied to long-term care insurance, it would be meaningful to review the factors that required benchmarking among the Japanese service models while designing a similar model in Korea.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.25 no.8
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• pp.1075-1084
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• 2022

Internet of Things(IoT) has become a key available technology for efficiently implementing device to device(D2D) services in various domains such as smart home, healthcare, smart city, agriculture, energy, logistics, and transportation. A lightweight publish/subscribe(Pub/Sub) messaging protocol not only establishes data dissemination pattern but also supports connectivity between IoT devices and their applications. Also, a Pub/Sub broker is deployed to facilitate data exchange among IoT devices. A scalable edge-based publish/subscribe (Pub/Sub) broker overlay networks support latency-sensitive IoT applications. In this paper, we design a hypercube grid quorum(HGQ) for distributed Pub/Sub systems based IoT applications. In designing HGQ, the network of hypercube structures suitable for the publish/subscribe model is built in the edge layer, and the proposed HGQ is designed by embedding a mesh overlay network in the hypercube. As their applications, we propose an HGQ-based mechansim for dissemination of the data of sensors or the message/event of IoT devices in IoT environments. The performance of HGQ is evaluated by analytical models. As the results, the latency and load balancing of applications based on the distributed Pub/Sub system using HGQ are improved.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Pharmacy
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.281-287
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• 2022

Pharmacists should maintain professional competencies to provide optimal pharmaceutical care services to patients, which can be achieved through continued commitment to lifelong learning. Traditionally continuing education (CE) has been widely used as a way of lifelong learning for many healthcare professionals. It, however, has several limitations. CE is delivered in the form of instructor-led education focused on multiple learners. Learning is passive and reactive for participants, so it sometimes does not lead to bringing behavioral changes in workplace performance. Therefore, recently the concept of lifelong learning tends to move from CE toward continuing professional development (CPD). CPD is an ongoing process that improves knowledge, skills, and competencies throughout a professional's career. It is a more comprehensive structured approach toward the enhancement of personal competencies. It emphasizes an individual's learning needs and goals and enables learning to become proactive, conscious, and self-directed. CPD consists of four stages: reflect, plan, learn, and evaluate. CE is one component of CPD. Each stage is recorded in a CPD portfolio. There are many practical difficulties in implementing the complete CPD system for lifelong learning of pharmacists in many countries including Korea. Applying a hybrid form that utilizes CPD and CE together, as in the case of some countries, could be an alternative. Furthermore, in undergraduate pharmacy education, it is necessary to teach students about CPD and train them on how to perform CPD as a pharmacist.