• Health Policy and Management
• /
• v.18 no.1
• /
• pp.21-42
• /
• 2008

This study investigates economies of scale, cost complementarity and economies of scope for healthcare organizations using econometric approaches. The economies of scale appear to exist in each service provided by a hospital such as inpatient treatment services, outpatient treatment services, and other patient treatment services, respectively. When we test all services in aggregate level, it also indicates that the healthcare industry on average exhibits the economies of scale of 6 percent, which implies that scaling up hospital sizes will bring substantial cost savings to them Evidence shows that cost complementarity exists between outpatient services and other services for patients and, i.e., these other services for patients experience the reduction in marginal costs as the outputs of the outpatient services increase. For the economies of scope, they are present in most service areas; aggregate level services, outpatient services, and other services for patients, respectively. Inpatient treatment services, however, do not show any evidence of the economies of scope. Results show that the economies of scope are achieved by the general hospital type that provides all service areas such as inpatient treatments, outpatient treatments, and other services for patients. The existence of the economies of scope provides the rationale for extending the existing line of business in a hospital into more diverse areas of services where its benefit comes in the form of cost savings. In sum, it overall provides evidence that the M&As in this industry are encouraged to achieve cost reductions from the economies of scale and scope by changing the size and the output mix.

• Journal of The Korea Institute of Healthcare Architecture
• /
• v.20 no.1
• /
• pp.57-66
• /
• 2014

Purpose: Healthy and balanced meal is very important for the elderly to maintain the quality of life in community. Senior meal delivery system and congregate meal services have been played an important role to prevent premature institutionalization of the elderly. Food delivery system and lunch service spaces for the Korean elderly were mostly focused and limited on low-income family. The purpose of this study is to analyze community food services environments for the elderly in the UK, the U.S. and Japan for the possibility of applying those service spaces to Korean community. Methods: Lunch service spaces of these three countries were investigated by literature research and visiting of venues. Pilot study of the elderly meal services in Seoul was done for comparing environments and future research. Results: Lunch service spaces in three countries were mostly community based for accessibility and the types of management were various for the elderly to choose the most suitable services for them. The group dining spaces are usually small and designed to give de-institutional atmosphere. Implications: Food service environments for the elderly in Korea should develop more community based model of food delivery and congregate meal service spaces as well as more de-institutionalized design of those spaces.

• International journal of advanced smart convergence
• /
• v.10 no.3
• /
• pp.66-71
• /
• 2021

Recent healthcare environments have characteristics of expanding the scope of healthcare-impacting healthcare, complexity resulting from diversification of components, and accelerating the pace of change. Drugs are used for the prevention, mitigation, and treatment of diseases, so they can inevitably cause harm, while they have efficacy and effectiveness, which are key elements of health recovery. Therefore, many countries regulate permits for safe and effective medicines, and also designate essential drugs directly related to life as pay targets and guarantee health insurance. Especially Pharmacist relying on manpower for composition medicine is liable for mal-manufacture due to combination of toxic medical substances or other chemical usage. In this paper, we focus on using Kiosk and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for automated pharmacy to level up medical service and create labor friendly environment for pharmacist themselves through maintenance of prescription data and automated manufacturing solution. Presentation of drug substances and precautions will lead to efficient drug prescription and prevent misuse of information while auto manufacturing system efficiently maintain labor force and raise patient satisfaction level by reduction of waiting time.

• Convergence Security Journal
• /
• v.7 no.2
• /
• pp.101-106
• /
• 2007

Recently, Ubiquitous innovation is being promoted so that they can support the uHealthcare provide management to human's health. It is thus necessary to conduct such research on the medical care environment where there is a high demand for utilization of status information. In the current situation, there is a lack of research on measures of security processing and monitoring patient status information produced from rapid growth of infra within Medical environment. This study suggests a solution of using RFID to gather patient information such as inpatient information, location of treatment room, progress of patient, humidity, temperature, and diagnostic status, after which the information are protect and processed using security level method.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
• /
• v.41 no.1
• /
• pp.55-61
• /
• 2020

Recently, there have been many research on fever management using u-healthcare technology. Especially, fever of infants requires continuous monitoring of body temperature by parents. For infants between 4 weeks and under 5 years old, it is recommended to use an electronic thermometer or chemical thermometer in the axilla, or to use an infrared thermometer. However, in order to overcome the reality of not being able to waste significant time on continuous monitoring, there have been demands of patch type thermometers with the internet of things (IoT) and wireless communication technologies. Existing IoT thermometers are difficult to attach to infants' body because they do not take into account its size, and their interoperability is not guaranteed because they do not comply with standards in communication. Therefore, in this study, a patch-type thermometer with a diameter of 20 mm and a weight of 2.9 g was developed to manage the fever of infants, while it communicates wirelessly with Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) communication protocol and complies with IEEE 11073 PHD(Personal Health Device) at the same time. We verified its performance under the requirements of thermometers regulated by the Korean Ministry of Food and Drug Safety.

• Journal of Digital Contents Society
• /
• v.15 no.1
• /
• pp.45-52
• /
• 2014

All medical information system stakeholders and the environment exists. Medical information systems for development in these environments and non-functional requirements, functional requirements and quality goals are to be met. In order to achieve these goals in a variety of ways currently being made to develop information systems and various applications are emerging. However, the process of developing these health information systems meet the basic requirements and does not consider that from the point of view should not be separate. This study of the development of health information systems related to quality measurement indicators for the analysis software architectures, and medical information, information quality evaluation of service quality information associated indicators evaluation are offered. This way of associated indicators for the quality of the output sum and analyze the trends in software architecture u-Healthcare should be available for assessment. Quality score compared with pre-set goals for achievement and satisfaction levels of analysis further support the cause excerpt field use in analysis and improvement is possible.

• Journal of Nutrition and Health
• /
• v.44 no.3
• /
• pp.231-242
• /
• 2011

The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of nutrition education based on ubiquitous healthcare (u-health) service on changes in dietary habits, nutrition intake, and risk factors for metabolic syndrome in male workers. In total, 72 male office workers with at least three risk factors of the National Cholesterol Education Program-Adult Treatment Panel III were recruited as subjects. Anthropometric measurements and biochemical analyses were conducted on all subjects. Dietary habits and nutrient intake were determined by a questionnaire using the 24-hour dietary recall method before and after nutrition education. Subjects measured their body composition, blood pressure, and physical activity more than once per week during the 12 weeks using the u-health care equipment and sent these data to a central database system using a personal computer. Individual nutrition counseling was provided four times on the first, fourth, eight, and twelfth weeks. The results showed significant decreases in abdominal circumference, body fat (%), diastolic blood pressure, serum triglycerides, and serum total cholesterol during the 12 weeks. Subjects with more than 12 measurements showed significant reductions in abdominal circumference, body fat (%), serum triglyceride, and serum total cholesterol. Mean intake of dietary fiber, animal calcium, potassium, vitamin C, and folic acid after nutrition education were higher than those before nutrition education. Participants showed significant increases in the frequencies of consuming protein foods (meat, fish, eggs, beans, tofu, etc.) and vegetables. In conclusion, nutrition education through the u-health service resulted in positive effects on the risk factors for metabolic syndrome, nutrient intake, and dietary habits.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
• /
• v.28 no.3
• /
• pp.369-376
• /
• 2007

With the convergence of ubiquitous networking and medical technologies, ubiquitous healthcare(U-Healthcare) service has come in our life, which enables a patient to receive medical services at anytime and anywhere. In the u-Healthcare environment, intelligent real-time biosignal aquisition/analysis techniques are inevitable. In this study, we propose a motion artifact cancelation method in portable photoplethysmography(PPG) signal aquisition using an accelerometer and an adaptive filter. A preliminary experiment represented that the component of the pedestrian motion artifact can be found under 5Hz in the spectral analysis. Therefore, we collected PPG signals under both simulated conditions with a motor that generates circular motion with uniform velocity (from 1 to 5Hz) and a real walking condition. We then reduced the motion artifact using a recursive least square adaptive filter which takes the accelerometer output as a noise reference. The results showed that the adaptive filter can remove the motion artifact effectively and recover peak points in PPG signals, which represents our method can be useful to detect heart rate in real walking condition.

• International Journal of Contents
• /
• v.10 no.3
• /
• pp.1-8
• /
• 2014

In this paper, we collect and analyze the status of mobile phone applications (hereafter apps) in the healthcare and fitness category of the Apple iTunes App Store and Google Play Store. We determine the number of apps and analyze statistical aspects such as classifications, age rating, fees, and user evaluation of the popular items. As of September 30, 2013, there were 236 popular apps available from iTunes. Google Play offered 720 apps. We discover that apps for healthcare and fitness are diverse. Apps for physical exercise have the greatest popularity. The proportions of apps that are suitable for all ages among the Google and iTunes popular apps are 55.8% and 89.4%, respectively. The user evaluation of apps in iTunes is relatively less positive. We determine that the proportion of paid apps to free apps in Google is higher than that of the apps in iTunes. We perform hypothesis tests and find statistically significant differences in age rating and perceived satisfaction between the apps of the Apple iTunes App Store and Google Play Store. However, we find no meaningful differences in the classification and price of the apps between the two app stores. We perform hypothesis tests to verify the differences in age rating and perceived satisfaction between the paid and free apps within and across the Google Play Store and iTunes App Store. There are statistically significant differences in the age rating between the paid and free apps in the Google play store, between the Google free and iTunes free apps, between the Google paid and iTunes paid apps, between the Google free and iTunes paid apps, and between the Google paid and iTunes free apps. There are statistically significant differences in the perceived satisfaction between the Google free and iTunes free apps, between the Google paid and iTunes paid apps, between the Google free and iTunes paid apps, and between the Google paid and iTunes free apps.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
• /
• v.11 no.8
• /
• pp.14-22
• /
• 2011

It is important for the strategy of service to provide the health information in the environment that the healthcare has been changed focusing on the preventive medicine. Recently, the various applications of u-healthcare have been presented by researchers. In this paper, we proposed the health information monitoring system using the context sensors based band. By wearing the proposed hand, the health status is gathered and vital signals are transmitted to the connected UMPC. It can be easily monitored according to the user locations in real time. To provide the health index according to the temperature, the air conditioning, the illumination, the humidity, and the ultraviolet rays, we use the various XML links extracted from RSS of the Korea Meteorological Administration. The health information is analyzed in terms of factors, such as, the asthma index, the stroke index, the skin disease index, the pulmonary disease index, the pollen concentration index, and the city high temperature index. Ultimately, this paper suggests empirical application to verify the adequacy and the validity with the proposed system. Accordingly, the satisfaction and the quality of services will be improved the healthcare.