• Health Policy and Management
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.98-115
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• 2003

Concerns about growing health insurance expenditures became a national Issue in 2001 when the National Health Insurance went into a deficit. Increases in spending for ambulatory care shared the largest portion of the problem. Methods and systems to control the spending should be developed and a system to measure case mix of providers is one of core components of the control system. The objectives of this article is to examine the feasibility of applying Korean Diagnosis Related Groups (KDRGs) to classify health insurance claims for ambulatory care and to identify problem areas of the classification. A database of 11,586,270 claims for ambulatory care delivered during January 2002 was obtained for the study, and the final number of claims analyzed was 8,319,494 after KDRG numbers were assigned to the data and records with an error KDRG were excluded from the study. The unit of analysis was a claim and resource use was measured by the sum of charges incurred during a month at a department of a hospital of at a clinic. Within group variance was assessed by th coefficient of variation (CV), and the classification accuracy was evaluated by the variance reduction achieved by the KDRG classification. The analyses were performed on both all and non-outlier data, and on a subset of the database to examine the validity of study results. Data were assigned to 787 KDRGs among 1,244 KDRGs defined in the classification system. For non-outlier data, 77.4％ of KDRGs had a CV of charges from tertiary care hospitals less than 100％ and 95.43％ of KDRGs for data from clinics. The variance reduction achieved by the KDRG classification was 40.80％ for non-outlier claims from tertiary care hospitals, 51.98％ for general hospitals, 40.89% for hospitals, and 54.99% for clinics. Similar results were obtained from the analyses performed on a subset of the study database. The study results indicated that KDRGs developed for a classification of inpatient care could be used for ambulatory care, although there were areas where the classification should be refined. Its power to predict tile resource utilization showed a potential for its application to measure case mix of providers for monitoring and managing delivery of ambulatory care. The issue concerning the quality of diagnostic information contained in insurance claims remains to be improved, and significance of future studies for other classification systems based on visits or episodes is guaranteed.

• Perspectives in Nursing Science
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.77-83
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• 2009

The number of nurses per bed at acute-stage hospitals is quite low in Korea compared with other OECD countries. In order to prevent the degradation of the quality of inpatient nursing services due to insufficient nurse staffs, the national health insurance introduced the differentiated nursing care fee system. This did not work as a motive for inducing the employment of nursing staff due to insufficient cost compensation. Because of insufficient nursing staff, family members have to stay with the patient or patients have to hire a personal care attendant. This increases the burden and cost to families. For the activation of hospitals without guardians, there should be policies for raising additional nursing staff such as standardizing jobs among nursing staff, particularly between nurses and nursing assistants, setting adequate standards of staffing in nursing according to medical service, substantiating the cost of nursing under the differentiated nursing care fee system, improving the medical fee system of hospitals without guardians including health insurance payment, supplying nursing staff stably through improving their working conditions such as providing child rearing services and salary increase, clarifying the qualification of personal care attendants working at acute.stage hospitals, developing indexes for assessing the quality of nursing care services, and monitoring for the management of uniform quality.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.309-333
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• 2010

Civil infrastructure, in both its construction and maintenance, represents the largest societal investment in this country, outside of the health care industry. Despite being the lifeline of US commerce, civil infrastructure has scarcely benefited from the latest sensor technological advances. Our future should focus on harnessing these technologies to enhance the robustness, longevity and economic viability of this vast, societal investment, in light of inherent uncertainties and their exposure to service and even extreme loadings. One of the principal means of insuring the robustness and longevity of infrastructure is to strategically deploy smart sensors in them. Therefore, the objective is to develop novel, durable, smart sensors that are especially applicable to major infrastructure and the facilities to validate their reliability and long-term functionality. In some cases, this implies the development of new sensing elements themselves, while in other cases involves innovative packaging and use of existing sensor technologies. In either case, a parallel focus will be the integration and networking of these smart sensing elements for reliable data acquisition, transmission, and fusion, within a decision-making framework targeting efficient management and maintenance of infrastructure systems. In this paper, prudent and viable sensor and health monitoring technologies have been developed and used in several large structural systems. Discussion will also include several practical bridge health monitoring applications including their design, construction, and operation of the systems.

• International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.12-18
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• 2021

This paper proposes a framework for the development of the health recommender system, designed to cater COVID-19 symptoms' self-assessment and monitoring as well as to provide recommendations for self-care and medical treatments. The aim is to provide an online platform for Patient Under Investigation (PUI) and close contacts with positive COVID-19 cases in Malaysia who are under home quarantine to perform daily self-assessment in order to monitor their own symptoms' development. To achieve this, three main phases of research methods have been conducted where interviews have been done to thirty former COVID-19 patients in order to investigate the symptoms and practices conducted by the Malaysia Ministry of Health (MOH) in assessing and monitoring COVID-19 patients who were under home quarantine. From the interviews, an algorithm using user-based collaborative filtering technique with Pearson correlation coefficient similarity measure is designed to cater the self-assessment and symptoms monitoring as well as providing recommendations for self-care treatments as well as medical interventions if the symptoms worsen during the 14-days quarantine. The proposed framework will involve the development of the health recommender system for COVID-19 self-assessment and treatments using the progressive web application method with cloud database and PHP codes.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.381-395
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• 2009

The paper presents a case study in which the structural condition assessment of the East Bay bridge in Gibsonton, Florida is evaluated with the help of remote health monitoring techniques. The bridge is a four-span, continuous, deck-type reinforced concrete structure supported on prestressed pile bents, and is instrumented with smart Fiber Optic Sensors. The sensors used for remote health monitoring are the newly emerged Fabry-Perot (FP), and are both surface-mounted and embedded in the deck. The sensing system can be accessed remotely through fast Digital Subscriber Lines (DSL), which permits the evaluation of the bridge behavior under live traffic loads. The bridge was open to traffic since March 2005, and the collected structural data have been continuously analyzed since. The data revealed an increase in strain readings, which suggests a progression in damage. Recent visual observations also indicated the presence of longitudinal cracks along the bridge length. After the formation of these cracks, the sensors readings were analyzed and used to extrapolate the values of the maximum stresses at the crack location. The data obtained were also compared to initial design values of the bridge under factored gravity and live loads. The study showed that the proposed structural health monitoring technique proved to provide an efficient mean for condition assessment of bridge structures providing it is implemented and analyzed with care.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.1213-1220
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• 2013

The purpose of this study was to identify the effect of the Smart Care ubiquitous healthcare service on hypertension management. Fifty one patients with inadequately controlled blood pressure (Systolic Blood Pressure ${\geq}$ 140 mmHg despite prescribed antihypertensive medication) from 4 local clinics participated in this study. Remote biometric monitoring and healthcare consultation via videophone was provided to the participants during 24 week - Smart Care service. The average number of blood pressure monitoring and the average day of remote consult using Smart Care Service system was 121 and 14.8 per participant. As a result of analyzing change in blood pressure during 24 weeks, there was a significant difference in blood pressure between baseline and 24 weeks. Systolic blood pressures of 86.3% participants were dropped within a normal range at 24 week. Smart Care u-health service could be effective in reducing blood pressure.

• Journal of Chest Surgery
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• v.55 no.2
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• pp.108-117
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• 2022

Background: The efficacy of telemedicine among cancer survivors is uncertain. The Smart After-Care Program (SAP), which is an interactive, smartphone-based remote health monitoring system, was developed to help patients manage their health after leaving the hospital. This study was designed to evaluate the efficacy of our remote health care program for lung cancer patients. Methods: We enrolled 50 patients with lung cancer. Self-monitoring devices were supplied to all patients, who were instructed to enter their daily vital signs and subjective symptoms to the Smart After-Care app. The app also provided information about rehabilitation exercises and a healthy diet for lung cancer patients. All patients received health counseling via telephone once a week and visited an outpatient clinic during weeks 6 and 12 to assess satisfaction with the SAP and changes in quality of life and physical performance. Results: Overall satisfaction with the SAP was very high (very good, 61.9%; good, 26.2%). In the multivariate analysis to identify factors affecting satisfaction, the distance between the patient's residence and the hospital was the only significant independent factor (p=0.013). Quality of life improved along all functional scales (p<0.05). Muscle strength significantly improved in the lower limbs (p=0.012). Two-minute walk distance also significantly improved (p=0.028). Conclusion: This study demonstrated that the SAP was acceptable for and supportive of patients with reduced pulmonary function after lung cancer treatment. The SAP was found to be particularly useful for patients living far from the hospital.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.51 no.1
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• pp.233-240
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• 2014

According to the recent increasing trend of the ages, numbers of patients with chronic diseases are increasing and issues for health care are importantly emerged. In this thesis the research implements U-health care system for health care of patients with chronic diseases. The suggested system for health care of patients with chronic diseases composes bio measurement system, mobile gateway and medical information management server, and bio-signals are composed with modules such as electrocardiogram, blood pressure, blood sugar, oxygen saturation if configured as client. Blood sugar check was considered and implemented to be chosen the ways to transmit through bio measurement system or through gateway. Suggested bio measurement system and mobile gateway are transmitted through Bluetooth. The transmitted biodata is searched by observing health check through mobile gateway, by transmitting through network server, and by using client. By implementing bio signal observation system of patients with chronic diseases, present health check is available by monitoring measured bio data, and various bio signals are transmitted in the mobile environment.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2015.05a
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• pp.890-891
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• 2015

With South Korea entering aging society, the problem of the elderly living alone is aggravating due to increasing health risks associated with social isolation. This should be counteracted by providing them with supports conducive to the recovery of social relationship and effective management of daily activities, such as health checkups, homecare services, chore services, and contents building for information service. This paper presents a human care system implementing miniaturization and portability for the elderly and other care recipients by integrating various contents into recipients' situation perception, direct experience, and sensor modules as a smartphone application in Internet of Things environment to facilitate their health status monitoring.

• Korean Journal of Occupational Health Nursing
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.5-17
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• 2000

The occupational health nursing guideline for primary care was developed by the Korean Academic Society of occupational health nursing and the organization for occupational health nurses (currently known as the Korean Association of Occupational Health Nurses) in 1993. Since then, there have been many changes in the health care environment and job performance of occupational health nurses. Appropriate revisions are necessary of the guidelinea based on this background. The purpose of this study was to describe the use of the occupational health nursing guideline for primary care and to analyze the characteristics of primary care activities by occupational health nurses. The questionnaire was mailed to 150 occupational health nurses(OHNs) with the response rate of 64%. The results can be summarized as follows; 1. 65.6% of OHNs have been using the guideline for primary care and 75.9% of them agreed that the guideline was be helpful for their job. 2. Common symptom care, emergency care and chronic illness care were more frequently implemented than occupational disease care by OHNs. In manufacturing industries, emergency care was more frequently implemented than chronic illness care in contrast to the service industries. 3. Most frequent common symptoms treated by OHNs were indigestion, diarrhea, abdominal pain, headache, and coughing. In the case of chronic illness, OHNs more frequently treated diseases of the gastro-intestinal system, skin and sensory organs, and the respiratory system. Emergency care for bruises, burn, and abrasions was more frequently provided. VDT syndrome was the most common occupational disease cared by OHNs in manufacturing and service industries. 4. OHNs prescribed the medicine for external application more frequently than internal medicine. Remedy for colds, analgesics, vitamins, and digestives were more frequently used. From these results, we suggest that the guideline should be revised to emphasize the activities consisting problem finding such as health assessment, physical examinations, monitoring and screening, and to renew the drug list in the range of over- the counter medication (OTC). In the future, the guideline will include the strategies for the role as the case manager.