• Health Policy and Management
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.21-37
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• 2001

The purpose of this study is to examine internet agent of IT(Information Technology) in health care industry Since IT is essential for corporate strategy in service management, this section examines IT in health care service, especially from the view of 'Agent Technology' that has been recently issued. Intelligent agent is a new paradigm for developing software applications. More than this, agent-based computing has been hailed as 'the next significant break-through in software development' and 'the new revolution in software'. And health care service is a non-mechanic, human-based service. This paper reviewed what possible suggestions or advices can be made to the health care service. Since many health care services using internet have been attempted over the recent years, this study will hopefully be able to come up with good suggestions from many aspects. Thus, information inequality between producer(physician) and consumer(patient) in health care service will be decreased through the introduction of agent technology.

• International Journal of Costume and Fashion
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.67-79
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• 2014

Recent research suggested that hospitals have not responded to consumer demand for the improved aesthetic and comfort of their patient garments. Thus a new patient garment has been developed considering human factors based on the Functional-Modesty-Aesthetics model. Based on the reviewed literature and the model, necessary design requirements were identified. Then the patient garment was evaluated in comparison to existing ones with regard to potential patients' satisfaction levels. As a result, the developed patient garment received better evaluations in the aspects of overall aesthetic satisfaction, color satisfaction, and willingness to wear than the existing patient garments.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.191-196
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• 2012

The importance of hi-tech communications technology including mobile or ubiquitous system and the related business field is currently expanding. In terms of wellness for enhancing quality of individual life, ICT technology became a requirement, not an option. The first purpose of this study is to identify factors that influence user's perceived usefulness & perceived ease of use related to the acceptance of TAM focused on ubiquitous fitness service through multiple regression analysis, thereby discovering important factors influencing consumer behavior. In conjunction with the result, the second purpose of this study has also its implication on the u-Healthcare system development using QFD. That is, this research is to propose the possibility of combining the external variables of TAM to u-Healthcare system service characteristics with user requirement reflected by using QFD method. Based on these results, the suitable system may be constructed and developed.

• Journal of Society of Preventive Korean Medicine
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.43-56
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• 2010

Objectives : This study aimed to investigate the attitude of healthcare consumers toward the East-West Collaborative Medical Practices(hereafter EWCMP). Method : The participants were 245 healthcare consumers who visited outpatient clinic of an university hospital, and attended at an emergency rescue educational program held by an emergency medical center, Busan. Data were collected by interviewing or self-reporting with questionnaires and analyzed with descriptive statistics and $X^2$ test with SPSS win 14.0. Results : 53.1 percent of 245 participants has heard, 13.9 percent has ever used, and 82.4 percent wanted to use EWCMP in the future. For participants who has used EWCMP, the decision to use it was made by themselves(58.8%), 26.5% of them was satisfied with EWCMP, and 79.4% showed the intention to introduce EWCMP to others. The use of EWCMP was significantly different by gender($X^2$=4.702, p=0.030) and having job or not($X^2$=14.305, p<0.001). Preferred type of EWCMP was to use both medical and Korean medical treatment at the same time(42.4%). Musculoskeletal disease(51.0%) and circulatory disease(51.0%) were expected to be the most effective when the EWCMP applied to them. Utilization of EWCMP was expected to be effective in disease treatment(88.2%), diagnosis(83.3%), and prevention(75.1%), and to increase medical cost(66.1%). Intention to use of EWCMP was not significantly different by demographic characteristics. Conclusion : Considering low proportion of utilization of and positive attitude toward the EWCMP among general populations, it is needed to introduce or advertise EWCMP to them.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea CI
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• v.48 no.6
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• pp.62-70
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• 2011

Smart-healthcare service is a health medical service which aims to provide an active consumer-directed service for both wellness and preventative health management upon the basis of rapid diffuse of smartphone which has been occurring recently. On this, this paper suggests a tele auscultation medicine smart-healthcare system based on digital stethoscope which is able through the use of the smart phone which is easy to approach anywhere. The suggested system consists of the digital stethoscope for patient's self auscultation and smart phone, the PC for doctor's examination, and the web server to connect those devices. A telemedicine can be performed between a doctor and a patient by the program which exchanges examine data and auscultation data among the devices. To sum up, by the system suggested in this paper, an easily and conveniently usable health medical service on an everyday basis could be provided without spatial and temporal limits.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.146-159
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• 2019

Background: The purpose of this study is to measure the Korean health literacy level and to analyse its gaps according to the factors of socioeconomic and health status and health behaviors. Based on this, policy implications were reviewed to improve the understandability on health information and to reduce the gap among socioeconomic groups. Methods: HLS-EU-Q47, a tool developed by the European Health Literacy Project, was used to conduct a face-to-face interview survey on the health literacy for the samples from general population. Results: The public general health literacy (HL) index was 34.5 out of 50. HL is consisted of three sub-dimensions: healthcare (HC-HL), disease prevention (DP-HL), and health promotion (HP-HL). And a HL analysis found scores of 34.7 points for HC-HL, 35.4 points for DP-HL, and 33.3 points for HP-HL. The level of all HL was different according to socioeconomic characteristics and health behavior. Conclusion: Based on the results of this study, more research activities on health-related literacy need to be conducted, and monitoring system on the HL level needs to be developed and implemented. In addition, a program to improve HL levels needs to be developed in order to strengthen the basis for a more sustainable healthcare system as an agenda with national health policy priority.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.28-39
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• 2016

The multi-mixed complex medical care facility consisting of mainly hospital and other associated facilities such as retail, office, accommodation, healthcare services, and so on, is currently recognized as a new segment in the real estate market. This study intends to identify the customer choice criteria for the development of multi-mixed complex medical care facility. Based on literature review and expert consultation, the 3 criteria with 12 sub-criteria for customer choice have been defined. And the AHP methodology has been implemented for the development of relative weight of those criteria depending on the type of facility including 'medical facility', 'supporting facility', 'healthcare service facility' and 'other ancillary facility'. Research findings indicated the implication for the optimal combination of facility development based on the customer choice criteria controlled by facility. Accordingly, this research intends to provide the guidance toward the development of multi-mixed complex medical care facility.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.11-20
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• 2010

According to diversity of life style, introduction of well-being trend and increase of demand based on the IT-convergence, Recently "smart clothing" study has been diversified on user applications such as entertainment, healthcare, business and sports. And the smart clothing's market has been progressed in diverse aspects. But, study of smart clothing based on consumer aspect and market diversification is insufficient. The purpose of this study is to identify consumer's needs on smart clothing and to suggest directions for development of smart clothing based on their lifestyle that focused on digital and fashion lifestyle that be closely connected with smart clothing product development. This study is focused on the ages of 20-30 who are considered to be high demand consumers on the smart clothing market. As a result of study, life style based on clothing and digital is categorized 3 types as trend-pursuit style, sensual information-pursuit style and practical function-pursuit style. we suggested direction for development of smart clothing based on consumer's needs of the smart clothing according to the customer's lifestyle types.

• Journal of Nutrition and Health
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• v.56 no.3
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• pp.330-347
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• 2023

Purpose: This study identified words closely associated with the keyword "dietary supplement" (DS) using big data in Korean social media and investigated consumer perceptions and trends related to DSs before (2019) and after the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic (2021). Methods: A total of 37,313 keywords were found for the 2019 period, and 35,336 keywords were found for the 2021 period using blogs and cafes on Daum and Naver. Results were derived by text mining, semantic networking, network visualization analysis, and sentiment analysis. Results: The DS-related keywords that frequently appeared before and after COVID-19 were "recommend", "vitamin", "health", "children", "multiple", and "lactobacillus". "Calcium", "lutein", "skin", and "immunity" also had high frequency-inverse document frequency (TF-IDF) values. These keywords imply a keen interest in DSs among Korean consumers. Big data results also reflected social phenomena related to DSs; for example, "baby" and "pregnant woman" had lower TD-IDF values after the pandemic, suggesting lower marriage and birth rates but higher values for "joint", indicating reduced physical activity. A network centered on vitamins and health care was produced by semantic network analysis in 2019. In 2021, values were highest for deficiency and need, indicating that individuals were searching for DSs after the COVID-19 pandemic due to a lack an awareness of the need for adequate nutrient intake. Before the pandemic, DSs and vitamins were associated with healthcare and life cycle-related topics, such as pregnancy, but after the COVID-19 pandemic, consumer interests changed to disease prevention and treatment. Conclusion: This study provides meaningful clues regarding consumer perceptions and trends related to DSs before and after the COVID-19 pandemic and fundamental data on the effect of the pandemic on consumer interest in dietary supplements.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.713-720
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• 2013

The objectives of this study are to identify whether the small area variation also exists in the oriental medicine and, if it exists, what causes, to expand our boundary of research interests on the small area variation observed at the western medicine toward the oriental medicine as one of the fundamental research foundations and to provide any fundamental findings from this study results to the healthcare politicians to promote consumer's rational behaviors for the use of healthcare. This study analyzed the health insurance claim data (2010, 2011) which were the patients of western medicine and the outpatients of the oriental medicine with the top 10 most frequent diseases and looked into the variation of healthcare utilization among the areas after grouping resident area into an 86-area category. The study result shows that the small area variation was also observed at the part of the oriental medicine in which the characteristics of patients critically affect the healthcare expenditure per visit day rather than those of providers and the characteristics of both patients and providers equally affect the healthcare expenditure per patient. Therefore, this study suggests that government set up healthcare policies on the standardization of oriental medicine to prevent its over-utilization and unmet need, enforcing the roles of oriental medicine in the markets, enhancing the appropriate health care utilization, and expanding provision and sharing the health care information to reduce unnecessary health care utilization.