South Korea, the perfect environment for digital health

South Korea is a digital pioneer, with some of the fastest internet speeds in the world, and by 2030, the government plans to make the country the third most digitally competitive in the world. Healthcare is flagged as a huge growth sector. In 2003, Seoul National University Bundang Hospital (SNUBH) became one of the first paperless hospitals, and now increased funding is being provided for the Healthcare Innovation Park (HIP) at SNUBH, which was opened in 2016 to foster industry-academia collaborations in areas such as healthcare information technology, medical genomics, and regenerative medicine. Professor Chang Wan Oh discusses what’s next for digital health in South Korea.

Q: What’s on the horizon for South Korea’s digital healthcare industry?

We’re laying important groundwork for widespread digital health and the collection of medical big data. For example, a joint project at HIP with the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI) and European Council for Nuclear Research (CERN) is using remotely located supercomputers to analyse data and secure the transfer of medical big data. We’re also cooperating with a network of South Korean hospitals to standardize, secure and cleanse data to prepare ourselves for large-scale multi-institution studies.

Q: Where is South Korean digital health today?

About 50% of South Korea’s digitized hospitals already use a paperless and comprehensive health care system developed at SNUBH called BESTCare 2.0. Nonetheless, South Korea’s healthcare big data market is expected to grow by roughly 17% annually, outpacing the progress of the global market. Even within the busy big data space, health care management services are expected to be the fastest and biggest section driving industry growth. This is reflected in the US$53 million in research funding won by HIP in 2019, up roughly 18% from 2018.

Q: What has made SNUBH successful in digital health?

As early pioneers, the faculty and staff have been quick to embrace new technologies and have banded together to address user needs. To do this, we have multiple task force teams (TFT) and committees that review and assess user requests for development, including the Electronic Medical Record TFT, Clinical Pathway TFT and Terminology Standardization Committee. These feedback channels have operated since we first developed our hospital information system in the early 2000s. They have kept our system relevant and user-driven.

Q: How is digital health impacting the fight against COVID-19?

South Korea had early success in flattening the curve during its first wave of COVID-19 due to a rapid response and a cutting-edge government-run contact tracing system. Information from the latter was linked directly to BESTCare 2.0.

SNUBH’s digital expertise has been useful in other aspects of the response. For example, the Gyeongi provincial government commissioned SNUBH to operate a community treatment centre for confirmed COVID-19 patients with mild symptoms. Digital advances have allowed some remote vital sign monitoring, reducing the risk of exposure for medical staff. Digitized medical records have also made it easier for medical staff to provide continuous care for patients in a rapidly changing environment.

SNUBH is developing a telehealth consultation system that is interfaced with our existing systems. This will improve telehealth services for patients, ensuring high quality care for those in isolation or facing travel restrictions.

And at HIP, researchers are cooperating with both the public and private sector to use medical big data to help develop vaccines, treatments and test kits through the SNUBH Translational Research Institute. Fortunately, its ABSL 3 facility is one of the few laboratories permitted to deal with animals infected with high-risk pathogens with possible risk of aerosol transmission.

Q: What’s the future of digital health?

We are already finding that artificial intelligence (AI) models are exceeding the accuracy of human experts in some areas such as chest x-rays, retinal fundus photographs and mammography. Digital pathology blended with AI models can detect microscopic cancer cells that even the most seasoned pathologists miss, and more technologies like this are on the horizon.

Moreover, digital therapeutics are proving useful in the treatment of behavioural, cognitive and sleep disorders. I believe it will also become vital in the management and prevention of metabolic diseases, such as hypertension, heart disease, and stroke. At HIP, we’re supporting new digital health ventures developing technologies like this through the HIP Business Incubation Center.

On an even broader scale, we need to make big data generated in hospitals more open and available for large-scale research collaboration. To solve these problems, people are cooperating globally to standardize and effectively process data. But we need to build more collaboration momentum to effectively conduct multi-national research.