South Korea

Health Informatics in South Korea has grown

considerably in recent years with the
professional outreach activities of the
- Korean Society of Medical Informatics (KOSMI)
- With the help of government, private
businesses, academic institutions, and
medical and nursing organizations

History of NI in Korea
1970s: The use of computers in
South Korea healthcare began
1987: The terms health informatics
and NI were first introduced in
Korea when the KOSMI was founded

History of NI in Korea
Until 1993: computers were not used in
nursing education and research
Until 1994: NI was not taught in universities
Since 1998: funding for a NI study group
provided by the Korean Science and
Engineering Foundation

Use of Information Technology in Clinical

Practice
-100% of teaching hospitals , 96% of general hospitals,
and 75% of private clinics now have hospital information
systems (Korea Health Industry Development Institute,
2000)
-A recent study shows that all of the teaching hospitals
and about 40% of general hospitals in Korea are using
order communication systems.
-95% of teaching hospitals and 20% of general

hospitals are equipped with picture archiving and

communication systems (PACS)

Health Informatics Education

Schools are beginning to realize the
importance of health informatics education
for clinicians
25% of medical schools and 21% of nursing
schools offer health informatics courses
The course contents vary a great deal from
school to school and the instructors are
mostly self-taught in these subjects

Research
The use of personalized digital
assistants (PDAs) in hospital and
home healthcare settings along with
the standardization and the use of
Web-based electronic patient
records are current areas of interest.

Standardization Activities
Administrative information systems in the
healthcare sector essentially use the
Korean Standard Classification of
Diseases(the Korean version of the
International Classification for Disease),
While clinician information systems are
beginning to use more concept-oriented
terminology such as SNOMED

Government Initiatives
The Korean government has
contributes to the development of
health informatics by providing funding
or other incentives and guidelines in
telemedicine, emergency medical
systems, infectious diseases reporting
systems and standardization.

Professional Outreach
-Since 1987, the KOSMI has played a
very important role in promoting and
developing health informatics.
-The IMIA has contributed significantly
to furthering the knowledge of South
Korean healthcare professionals about
worldwide trends in health informatics

Technology Trends
-The rapid growth in the number of
mobile telephone users and the
advances in wireless local area network
technology have led to mobile
computing in healthcare.
-The need for telemedicine continues to
grow

Summary
The Korean healthcare environment is becoming
inhospitable due to:
High costs
Increasing competitions among healthcare
organizations
Decreased funding from the government
Customers with more sophisticated demands
Health informatics and the usage of information
technology have seen rapid progress in South