• Korean Journal of Clinical Pharmacy
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.143-148
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• 2020

Objective: This study aimed to investigate pharmaceutical care for critically ill neonates and suggest targeted strategies compatible with the Korean health-system pharmacy. Methods: Articles that reported pharmacy practices for critically ill neonates were reviewed. Pharmaceutical care practices and roles of neonatal pharmacists were identified, and criteria were developed for neonates in need of specialized care by clinical pharmacists. Results: Neonatal pharmacists play many roles in the overall medication management pathway. For clinical decision support, multidisciplinary ward rounds, clinical pharmacokinetic services, and consultation for pharmacotherapy and nutrition support were conducted. Prevention and resolution of drug-related problems through review of medication charts contributed to medication safety. Pharmaceutical optimization of intravenous medication played an important role in safe and effective therapy. Information on the use of off-label medicine, recommended dosage and dosing schedules, and stability of intravenous medicine was provided to other health professionals. Most clinical practices for neonates in Korea included therapeutic drug monitoring and nutrition support services. Reduction in medication errors and adverse drug reactions, shortening the duration of weaning medicines, decreasing the use and cost of antimicrobials, and improvement in nutrition status were reported as the outcomes of pharmacist-led interventions. The essential criteria of pharmaceutical care, including for patients with potential high-risk factors for drug-related problems, was developed. Conclusion: Pharmaceutical care for critically ill neonates varies widely. Development and provision of standardized pharmaceutical care for Korean neonates and a stepwise strategy for the expansion of clinical pharmacy services are required.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.179-194
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• 2011

Although there have been studies regarding the separating policy of dispensary and medical practice, little study have provided a concrete empirical evidence to what extent the policy objectives are achieved. In this paper, we try to provide empirical evidence whether the policy separating dispensary from medical practice achieved the policy objectives, which representatively are reducing the mis-use or over-use of anti-biotic prescriptions and medicines, and decreasing the government spending for the cost of pharmaceutical support. By comparing the average of the rate of change of the number of medicines prescribed, the rate of anti-biotics prescribed, and the government spending for the cost of pharmaceutical support between the areas where the separation policy was implemented and the exceptional areas, we concluded that it is difficult to conclude that the policy separating dispensary and medical practice achieved its policy objects, as it first announced to achieve in the introduction of the policy in 2000. However, the limitation of this study is that the data, that can thoroughly analyze the effect of separating policy of dispensary from medical practice, cannot be collected as expected. Hence, we could not use a parsimonious empirical model to evaluate the effect of the policy introduced in 2000. Rather we used a simple statistical method to extract enough empirical evidence fro m the data available. In the near future, we would expect to see more research that analyze the exact effect of policy separating dispensary and medical practice with concrete empirical model using more sophisticated dataset.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.21 no.12
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• pp.125-130
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• 2016

Automatic quality inspection by computer vision can be applied and give a solution to the pharmaceutical industry field. Pharmaceutical capsule can be easily affected by flaws like dents, cracks, holes, etc. In order to solve the quality inspection problem, it is required computationally efficient image processing technique like thresholding, boundary edge detection and segmentation and some automated systems are available but they are very expensive to use. In this paper, we have developed a dented capsule image processing technique using edge-based image segmentation, TLS(Total Least Squares) curve fitting technique and adopted low cost camera module for capsule image capturing. We have tested and evaluated the accuracy, training and testing time of the classification recognition algorithms like PCA(Principal Component Analysis), ICA(Independent Component Analysis) and SVM(Support Vector Machine) to show the performance. With the result, PCA, ICA has low accuracy, but SVM has good accuracy to use for classifying the dented capsule.

• KIPS Transactions on Computer and Communication Systems
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• v.10 no.12
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• pp.329-342
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• 2021

The pharmaceutical industry is experiencing a productivity crisis with a low probability of success despite a long period of time and enormous cost. As a strategy to solve the productivity crisis, the use cases of Artificial Intelligence(AI) and Bigdata are increasing worldwide and tangible results are coming out. However, domestic pharmaceutical companies are taking a wait-and-see attitude to adopt AI platform for drug research. This study proposed a research model that combines the Value-based Adoption Model and the Innovation Resistance Model to empirically study the effect of value perception and resistance factors on adopting AI Platform. As a result of empirical verification, usefulness, knowledge richness, complexity, and algorithmic opacity were found to have a significant effect on perceived values. And, usefulness, knowledge richness, algorithmic opacity, trialability, technology support infrastructure were found to have a significant effect on the innovation resistance.

• Archives of Pharmacal Research
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.173-177
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• 1996

The Pneumococcus, Streptococcus pneumoniae, has an ample polysaccharide (PS) capsule that is highly antigenic and is the main virulence factor of the organism. The capsular PS is the source of PS vaccine. This investigation was undertaken to optimize the culture conditions for the production of capsular PS by type 4 pneumococcus. Among several culture media, brain heart infusion (BHI) and Casitone based medium were found to support luxuriant growth of pneumococcus type 4 at the same level. Therefore in this study, the Casitone based medium was used to study optimization of the culture condition because of BHI broth's high cost and complex nature. The phase of growth which accomodated maximum PS production was exponential phase. Concentrations of glucose greater than 0.8% did not enhance growth or PS production. Substitution of nitrogen sources with other resources or supplementation of various concentrations of metal ion (with the exception of calcium, copper, and magnesium ions) had adverse effects on growth and PS production. On the other hand, low level aeration and supplementation of 3 mg/l concentration of asparagine, phenylalanine, or threonine were beneficial for increased PS production. The synergistic effect of all the favorable conditions observed in pneumococcal growth assays provided a two-fold cumulative increase in capsular PS production.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Pharmacy
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.46-51
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• 2007

This study was aimed to provide the controlled terminology for adverse drug reactions by selecting an appropriate internationally standardized classifications (WHO-ART or MedDRA). We collected the relevant information on ADR terminology systems including WHO-ART and MedDRA by online searching and visiting pharmaceutical companies and WHO UMC (Uppsala Monitoring Centre, Uppsala, Sweden). For MedDRA, project leader directly communicated with the officer of MSSO (Maintenance and Support Services Organization). Collecting all the pertinent information, two possible terminology classifications or systems (WHO-ART and MedDRA) were compared in the views of acceptability, cost-effectiveness and international feasibility and reviewed by the consultation committee and finally WHO-ART was selected.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.1-25
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• 2005

Legislation on pharmaceutical reimbursement decision using economic evaluation results was made in Korea in fm, but has yet to be fully implemented. We evaluated the quality of Korean economic evaluation studies of pharmaceuticals to understand gaps between legislation and implementation. From this evaluation, we propose policy options that might strengthen the research Infrastructure In order to support such studies. We reviewed 23 published studies for drugs conducted between 1996 and 2004. Evaluation criteria included methodological characteristics, healthcare system characteristics, population characteristics, and applicability of results. Large variation in study quality was observed, particularly with study design, outcome data, treatment patterns and interpretation. Korean clinical data used was mostly from observational studies of 1-2 hospitals. Foreign data was extracted from clinical trials that did not Include Asian population and their selection criterion was not clarified. With respect to treatment patterns, medical records and hospital bills were used without adjustment regarding area, hospital type, and others. And next frequent situation relied on expert opinion from academic physicians in specialty practice. preference measures, when used, were not elicited from the Korean population. $78.3\%$ of studies did not clarify the funding source. If the Korean economic evaluation policy is to provide meaningful data for decision makers, the quality of cost-effectiveness studies will need to improve dramatically. This may involve access to or creation of better data, more diverse funding, unproved training of researchers and evaluators, and partnerships with technology manufacturers.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Maternal and Child Health
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.159-165
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• 2017

The thalidomide tragedy in the 1960s has resulted in a perpetuation of a certain perception amongst physicians and pregnant women that the use of medication during pregnancy is a potential teratogen. Consequently, physicians hesitate in prescribing medication to pregnant women. In addition, pregnant women often refuse medication despite therapeutic necessity because of this existing perception. Recently there have been frequent adverse pregnancy outcomes related to the recurrence of chronic diseases, such as hypertension and diabetes, following pregnancy in older women. And there are lots of unnecessary termination of pregnancy due to the of information of medication exposed to medication following over 50% of unintended pregnancy. In light of this, better dissemination of information regarding the safe usage of medication for pregnant women is required. This would not only be cost-effective in terms of medical expenditure, but also prove beneficial for the treatment of diseases. In addition, Korea needs to adapt to the increasing changes of the international information system regarding supporting the safe usage of medication during pregnancy. An example of this is shown by the recent changes to the labeling of medication by the United States Food and Drug Administration. The new labeling includes information on the risk of usage, rather than just an arbitrary alphabetic classification of B, C, D, or X. Furthermore, this information is limited in Korea because of the lack of research, which in turn is due to several limitations on ethics and methodology, as well as present regulations on the research of pregnant women. From this, we can learn that government support is critical for the establishment of research so that we can alter the perception that all medication is harmful to pregnant women.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Near Infrared Spectroscopy Conference
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• 2001.06a
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• pp.3113-3113
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• 2001

Some two years ago our company undertook a project on manufacturing network rationalization to maximize competitiveness through continuous improvement in manufacturing efficiency. One key outcome was the recognition of the benefits that could be derived from timely application of new technology or novel use of existing technologies and even more importantly the need to develop company wide strategies to maximize the impact of such applications. As a direct result an exercise was undertaken to identify the ten most promising technologies from a list of literally hundreds seen as having the capability of making a rapid impact on the manufacturing initiative. One of the outcomes of this exercise was the identification of Near Infrared Spectroscopy as a pivotal technology for improving process understanding, performance, and control to deliver consistent product quality cost effectively with broad applicability across our product range. While NIR had been in use in targeted areas on some of our sites for some years our new challenge was to develop a strategy to extend NIRs application, initially over 17 manufacturing sites, while concurrently expanding the NIR skill base company wide to ensure that the return on initial investment could be further maximized as shared applications across the remaining sites as required. This presentation will provide an overview of how life cycle based user requirement specifications were developed covering: ㆍSpectrophotometers ㆍSample interfaces ㆍSoftware ㆍEquipment and Software qualification ㆍCalibration transfer ㆍ Ease of developing effective user interfaces and control for applications transferred to a production area ㆍUser training ㆍWorld wide support The presentation will also describe the process adopted for vendor selection to ensure maximum utilization of the existing company wide NIR skill base and its future development to expedite applications of the technology in development, quality control and production areas.

• International Journal of Advanced Culture Technology
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.16-21
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• 2021

As the average age of national veterans has increased from 69 years old(2011) to 71 years old(since 2015) over the past five years, the overall medical service cost of veterans has increased by about 20%. The main cause of this phenomenon is 'ultra-aging', which accounts for 67% of veterans, while the proportion of health insurance patients aged 70 or older is 9%. Therefore, it is judged that the analysis of the trend of use of medical services at veterans hospitals in each region that is in charge of severe medical services of national veterans can serve as an opportunity to seek countermeasures for the severe medical system of national veterans. First of all, based on the details of major medical expenses (hospitalization, outpatient, pharmaceutical expenses) by region for the last 10 years(2010-2019), data significance was performed through a chi-square test, and the Central Veterans Hospital and Non-Central Veterans Hospital using EXCEL. 'Expected frequency' was calculated by year. By applying the CHITEST(observation frequency, expected frequency) function again, the p-value(p<0.05) was calculated, and the profit bias of each region's veterans hospital could be determined. The specific research method is for the last 10 years(2010-2019) for state-sponsored patients_outpatient treatment income, state-sponsored patients_hospitalization income, exempt patients_outpatients at the Central Veterans Hospital, Busan Veterans Hospital, Gwangju Veterans Hospital, Daegu Veterans Hospital, and Daejeon Veterans Hospital. A one-way analysis of variance was conducted to verify the significance of the difference between group averages on the status of 5 medical revenues of veterans hospitals in each of the 5 regions, including medical treatment income, reduced patients_hospitalization income, and reduced patients_medicine expenses. It was found to be significant(p<0.05) at all levels, including region and type. Finally, the bias in the profit structure of regional veterans hospitals was the highest in 2017(p=0.0004) and the lowest in 2013(p=0.0349). In addition, in the profit structure of the Veterans Hospital, the year in which the'regional' variable worked the most was 2019, and the year with the least affected was 2010. The order of the former is Jungang(=31,674,713), Busan(=12,314,614), Gwangju(=11,957,038), Daegu(=10,168,015), and Daejeon(=6,991,034), and the order of the latter is Jungang(=57,868,791), and Busan(=19,183,194). Gwangju(=17,904,712), Daegu(=15,656,034), and Daejeon(=14,377,395). In conclusion, the profit bias of veterans hospitals repeatedly raced the lowest(p=0.01986) and highest(p=0.03499) for the past five years(2010-2014) year by year, with the 'regional' variable being the most in the veterans hospital's profit structure It was identified as a major influence factor. On the other hand, for the last 5 years (2015-2019), the influence factors of the'regional' variable every year were in 2015(p=0.02015), 2016(p=0.01741), 2017(p=0.00045), and 2018(p=0.00394). in 2019(p=0.00227), a significant difference was confirmed at a very low level.