• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.106-130
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• 1999

The main objective of this paper is to perform an empirical analysis on the relationship between various marketing activities and financial performance of Korean hospitals. A survey was conducted through structured questionnaire for 495 hospitals, and data from 218 hospitals were utilized in the final anaylsis.(response rate: 44%) Survey items include general characteristics of the hospitals(size, type, location), degree of competition, financial performance. marketing organization! budget, and level of various marketing activities in service development, access improvement, promotion, and pricing. We examine descriptive statistics of the response scores on marketing activities to evaluate the current status of marketing management of Korean hospitals, compare the results across hospital size, type and location, and perform regression analysis to investigate the relaionship between marketing and financial performance. Major findings are as follows: 1) About 46% of the responding hospitals have marketing departments although they are named as 'planning' or 'PR' departments, and the marketing budget on average represents 1.74% of the total expenditures. 2) Average level of marketing activities is calculated to be about 3.32 on 5-point scale, meaning that Korean hospitals implement their marketing programs 'somewhat actively'; however, the scores on the areas of marketing plannning and strategy are relatively low. 3) Large hospitals tend to be more active in marketing than small hospitals, and public hospitals' activities in marketing are not lower compared to private hospitals. 4) Level of overall marketing activities is positively related with financial performance measured by various finacial indicators except for profitability, implying that marketing is successful in revenue generation but needs to be more cost-effective. Also, when the marketing variables are separately included in the regression, no significant relationship is found, which means that various marketing activities are more effective when they are collectively implemented.

• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.41-59
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• 1999

Objectives: This study was done to compare patient satisfaction and hospital charges of surgery performed in an outpatient basis(ambulatory surgical procedures). Methods : This retrospective study was performed in 20(vitrectomy 11, tonsillectomy 9) randomly selected ambulatory surgical procedures patients and 50(vitrectomy 26, tonsillectomy 24) inpatients who. received the same procedure at a general hospital in Seoul since January 1, 1998 to October 31, 1998. The operative procedures were vitrectomy and tonsilletomy which could be performed on a ambulatory surgical procedures basis or on an inpatient basis. Results: The results of this study shows that the patients thought the expenses and the surgical operative time was an important factor in a ambulatory surgical procedures but there were no differences in the patient satisfaction by the method of surgery. The charges of vitrectomy and tonsilletomy were reduced up to 495,000 won and 380,000 won from l,589,000 won 842,000 won inpatient surgery respectively. Conclusions: This study focused only on the charges of the surgical procedures and did not include the cost of patient helper, the lost salary due to missing days of work to care for a member of the family, transportation costs, and other indirect costs. Therefore, if those fees were included, ambulatory surgical procedures would be more economical. Therefore, by giving incentives at the fee schedule, the government health policies it would reduce the total hospital charges.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.14 no.8
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• pp.1836-1842
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• 2010

Sensor network, which is technology to realize the ubiquitous environment, recently, could apply to the field of Mechanic & electronic Security System, Energy management system, Environment monitoring system, Home automation and health care application. However, feature of wireless networking of sensor network is vulnerable to eavesdropping and falsification about message. Presently, PKC(public key cryptography) technique using ECC(elliptic curve cryptography) is used to build up the secure networking over sensor network. ECC is more suitable to sensor having restricted performance than RSA, because it offers equal strength using small size of key. But, for high computation cost, ECC needs to enhance the performance to implement over sensor. In this paper, we propose the optimizing technique for multiplication, core operation in ECC, to accelerate the speed of ECC.

• Journal of Technology Innovation
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.36-59
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• 1999

Fundamental advances in the biotechnologies are exerting a profound influence on the health care, agricultural, industrial chemical, environmental, and other industrial fields. Korean government are now more and more realizing the importance of biotechnology as a main technology for the 21st century. But any technical progress is largely the result of a complex set of relationships among the firms, institutions and others involved in development. So understanding the complexity is very important to make promoting strategies and it is even critical in the field of biotechnology. The reason is that commercialization of research results in biotechnology is strongly related with the national science bases provided by academic and public institutes. And its applicable industrial sectors are very diverse. So it is very important to make a effective collaboration system among many R&D related agents. This article discusses and compares both USA and Japanese framework of national innovation systems in the field of biotechnology. The American Innovation system encourages basic research in the biological sciences, and fosters the creation of small venture firms that focus on the development of novel products. America's peculiar incentive structure, derived from its research and educational system, financial system, and regulatory environment has driven USA labs and firms to the forefront of many biotechnology fields. The Japanese institutional environment in contrast, supported the strategy of building production expertise. Firms were urged to use the new techniques as a way of leapfrogging into a second generation of bio-products, in that cost and production advantages count. But the strategy was not effective as expected and Japanese firms have remained competent but not prominent rivals. The differing situations in USA and Japan with regard to biotechnology have many suggestions for our bioindustry. In the conclusion of this article, we translate USA and Japan's experiences to some suggestions which guide for promoting Korea's biotechnology R&D and commercialization activities.

• The Korean journal of internal medicine
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• v.33 no.6
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• pp.1160-1168
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• 2018

Background/Aims: The Republic of Korea is a country where the hemodialysis population is growing rapidly. It is believed that the numbers of treatments related to vascular access-related complications are also increasing. This study investigated the current status of treatment and medical expenses for vascular access in Korean patients on hemodialysis. Methods: This was a descriptive observational study. We inspected the insurance claims of patients with chronic kidney disease who underwent hemodialysis between January 2008 and December 2016. We calculated descriptive statistics of the frequencies and medical expenses of procedures for vascular access. Results: The national medical expenses for access-related treatment were 7.12 billion KRW (equivalent to 6.36 million USD) in 2008, and these expenses increased to 42.12 billion KRW (equivalent to 37.67 million USD) in 2016. The population of hemodialysis patients, the annual frequency of access-related procedures, and the total medical cost for access-related procedures increased by 1.6-, 2.6-, and 5.9-fold, respectively, over the past 9 years. The frequency and costs of access care increased as the number of patients on hemodialysis increased. The increase in vascular access-related costs has largely been driven by increased numbers of percutaneous angioplasty. Conclusions: The increasing proportion of medical costs for percutaneous angioplasty represents a challenge in the management of end-stage renal disease in Korea. It is essential to identify the clinical and physiological aspects as well as anatomical abnormalities before planning angioplasty. A timely surgical correction could be a viable option to control the rapid growth of access-related medical expenses.

• Journal of Society of Preventive Korean Medicine
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.25-42
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• 2019

Objectives : The purpose of this study was to identify factors that affect the utilization of Korean medicine (KM) among children with cerebral palsy (CP) and explore a processing model of decision-making by their parents. Methods : We conducted an individual in-depth interview with 21 mothers of children with CP who were recruited during the observational study. A grounded theory of Strauss and Corbin was used for qualitative analysis. Thus, collected data were classified into open coding including 121 concepts, 27 sub-categories and 7 categories. Results : The central phenomenon of the process of using KM for children with CP is 'KM as an optional treatment not essential'. Therefore there are many obstacles to starting KM treatment and it is easily interrupted for various reasons, unlike general rehabilitation treatment. However, if the patient experiences the therapeutic effect, the parents want to continue KM treatment. They try to provide treatment as much as possible if they can afford it. The parents give priority to general rehabilitation treatment and value the information and experience provided by the caregivers in similar situation as well as expert opinions. Conclusions : To expand and generalize KM treatment for children with CP, efforts to change interventional conditions such as treatment effect, treatment cost, treatment compliance, and convenience of treatment based on the understanding of the strategy used by the parents in KM utilization.

• The Journal of the Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.187-195
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• 2019

Recently, it has become possible to collect, store, process, and analyze data generated in various fields by the development of the technology related to the big data. These big data technologies are used for clinical results analysis and the optimization of clinical trial design will reduce the costs associated with health care. Therefore, in this paper, we are going to analyze clinical results and present guidelines that can reduce the period and cost of clinical trials. First, we use Sqoop to collect clinical results data from relational databases and store in HDFS, and use Hive, a processing tool based on Hadoop, to process data. Finally we use R, a big data analysis tool that is widely used in various fields such as public sector or business, to analyze associations.

• Design & Manufacturing
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.17-24
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• 2020

Products for heating indoors in low temperature and dry winter are largely divided into products using fossil fuels and products using electricity. The fossil fuels can warm the entire space by convection, but there is a high risk of fire and the frequent ventilation due to the increase in carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. Heaters using electricity are mainly used because they are convenient to use and are cheap. However, these products can not efficiently warm the air because they use radiation energy. In other words, only the front part exposed to the heater is warm, and the rear part has no heating effect at all. Also, because it emits a large amount of light, fatigue of the eyes is very high. Another problem is that when using electric heaters, the room tends to be dry by high heat. Indoor humidity maintenance is a very important factor in the prevention and treatment of respiratory diseases. Especially, it is essential for health care for infants, bronchial organs and people with weak respiratory because humidity is low in winter. In this study, we conducted a study to develop a product that can improve heating efficiency while maintaining proper indoor humidity by combining heat energy and moisture particles. The concept of humidification and heating at the same time, moisture particles generated in the humidifier pass through the heater, include thermal energy, and the moisture particles with thermal energy are diffused into the space by forced convection, thereby warming the entire space. In addition, the heating time is shortened as the feeling temperature is increased with the high relative humidity, and this has the effect that the heating cost in winter is reduced.

• Journal of Korea Society of Industrial Information Systems
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.32-50
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• 2009

Since 1990 when order communication system(OCS) was first introduced, the use of information technology in medical service has been widely accepted in order to enhance quality and customer relationship as well as to increase managerial efficiency. Medical information system is rapidly increasing and is trying to make ubiquitous healthcare environment through telemedicine system. Especially, medical profession and government have taken interest in electronic medical record (EMR) system which can digitalize and manage all medical records in hospitals. By recording patient's medical information in real time, EMR system can improve service efficiency and customer service quality including short waiting time, various utilization of clinic information, and reduced cost.

• Korean Journal of Acupuncture
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• v.40 no.4
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• pp.194-205
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• 2023

Objectives : This study investigated the current utilization status of thermotherapy devices in Korean medicine (KM) institutions and identified areas for improvement and further development, as perceived by KM doctors (KMDs). Methods : An online survey was conducted, targeting KMDs primarily engaged in clinical patient care. The questionnaire included items about respondents' clinical practices, the extent of thermotherapy device usage, their opinions on these devices, and perceived improvement needs. The collected data underwent quantitative analysis. Results : From the 1,025 respondents, data from 862 respondents who provided complete responses were analyzed. On average, respondents utilized thermotherapy treatments for 80% of their patients. Infrared (IR) phototherapy unit, electrical moxibustion apparatus, and heater-based thermotherapy devices were predominantly owned by respondents, with IR being the most frequently used. The average satisfaction score for current thermotherapy devices was 79. A significant concern raised was the necessity for improved health insurance coverage and efficacy evaluation. Conclusions : This research has confirmed that the extensive use of thermotherapy devices by KMDs in treating primarily musculoskeletal and gastrointestinal ailments - common conditions among patients in KM institutions. The main areas identified for improvement encompass safety, cost-effectiveness, and device efficacy. Future enhancements in thermotherapy devices should address these crucial aspects.