• International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.269-275
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• 2022

Public healthcare has recently become an issue of great importance due to the exponential growth in the human population, the increase in medical expenses, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Speed is one of the crucial factors in saving life, particularly in case of heart attack. Therefore, a healthcare device is needed to continuously monitor and follow up heart health conditions remotely without the need for the patient to attend a medical center. Therefore, this paper proposes a portable electrocardiogram (ECG) monitoring system to improve healthcare for heart attack patients in both home and ambulance settings. The proposed system receives the ECG signals of the patient and sends the ECG values to a MySQL database on the IoT-cloud via Wi-Fi. The signals are displayed as an ECG data chart on a webpage that can be accessed by the patient's doctor based on the HTTP protocol that is employed in the IoT-cloud. The proposed system detects the ECG data of the patient to calculate the total number of heartbeats, number of normal heartbeats, and the number of abnormal heartbeats, which can help the doctor to evaluate the health status of the patient and decide on a suitable medical intervention. This system therefore has the potential to save time and life, but also cost. This paper highlights the five main advantages of the proposed ECG monitoring system and makes some recommendations to develop the system further.

• International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.153-160
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• 2024

Information technology plays an important role in healthcare. The cloud has several applications in the fields of education, social media and medicine. But the advantage of the cloud for medical reasons is very appropriate, especially given the large volume of data generated by healthcare organizations. As in increasingly health organizations adopting towards electronic health records in the cloud which can be accessed around the world for various health issues regarding references, healthcare educational research and etc. Cloud computing has many advantages, such as "flexibility, cost and energy savings, resource sharing and rapid deployment". However, despite the significant benefits of using the cloud computing for health IT, data security, privacy, reliability, integration and portability are some of the main challenges and obstacles for its implementation. Health data are highly confidential records that should not be made available to unauthorized persons to protect the security of patient information. In this paper, we discuss the privacy and security requirement of EHS as well as privacy and security issues of EHS and also focus on a comprehensive review of the current and existing literature on Electronic health that uses a variety of approaches and procedures to handle security and privacy issues. The strengths and weaknesses of some of these methods were mentioned. The significance of security issues in the cloud computing environment is a challenge.

• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.32-42
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• 2014

It is necessary to calculate prime cost of medical services accurately in order to evaluate the adequacy of medical fee. This paper aims to identify cost analysts' perception on prime cost of medical services and needs in establishing a cost accounting system in hospitals, proposing future directions and guidelines for the calculation of medical fee. A self-administered questionnaire and telephone survey on operation of a hospital cost-accounting system was conducted in November, 2012, among cost analysts currently working in the hospitals and hospital administrators planning to implement the hospital cost-accounting system. Our study shows that most of the cost analysts were aware of the importance of calculating prime cost and responded that collection of the prime cost data from government is necessary although they are less likely to provide the data in the future concerning the risk of data misuse and data security. They also responded that lack of budget allocation and excessive workload were the main reasons for not estimating the prime cost and operating cost management information system. Results show that hospital cost analysts considered the data accuracy is the most critical factor in calculating prime costs of medical services. However, there was no investment budget allocated in some hospitals or limited to less than 100 million, indicating that hospitals are reluctant to invest on implementing the cost accounting system. Respondents stated the organization that collects the prime cost of medical services among hospitals should display strong analytical capabilities, ensure data security, and maintain independence, which is most demanded. There are 57 hospitals that calculated the prime cost of medical services for 2012 by each medical department and 20 hospitals that calculated the prime cost by fee-for-services, aiming to establish a cost accounting system. Our results indicate that hospitals should voluntarily provide the accurate prime cost for medical services in order to properly evaluate the adequacy of medical fee. Consequently, it is critical to establish an independent organization to collect and appraise the data. It is also recommended that government should implement various policies to encourage hospitals to participate in the data collection to achieve the data accuracy and representativeness.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea CI
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• v.45 no.4
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• pp.64-72
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• 2008

Researchers nowadays are trying to implement u-Healthcare (ubiquitous Healthcare) systems for real-time monitoring and analysis of patients' status through a low-cost and low-power wireless sensor network. u-Healthcare system has an aim to provide reliable and fast medical services for patients regardless of time and space by transmitting to doctors a large quantity of vital signs collected from sensor networks. Existing u-Healthcare systems can merely monitor patients' health status. However, it is not easy to derive physiologically meaningful results by analyzing rapidly vital signs through the existing u-Healthcare systems. We introduce a Grid computing technology for deriving the results by analyzing rapidly the vital signs collected from the sensor network. Since both sensor network and Grid computing use different protocols, a gateway is needed. In addition, we also need to construct a gateway which includes the functions such as an efficient management and control of the sensor network, real-time monitoring of the vital signs and communication services related to the Grid network for providing u-Healthcare services effectively. In this paper, to build an advanced u-Healthcare system by using these two technologies most efficiently, we design and present the results to implement a SensorGrid gateway which connects transparently the sensor network and the grid network.

• Journal of Korean Academic Society of Home Health Care Nursing
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.81-90
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• 2019

Purpose: In accordance with changes in the healthcare environment, it is necessary to understand managerial cost accounting for nurses. This study aimed to develop educational components of managerial cost accounting for nurses. Methods: This study is comprised of a comprehensive literature review, nominal group technique using focus group interview, audit by an expert group, and priority analysis. Results: The comprehensive literature review identified 15 educational components of managerial cost accounting. In the nominal group technique, the participants finally agreed on eight educational components of managerial cost accounting for nurses. The average content validity index of these components was 0.99. "Activity-based costing" scored the highest for relative importance (15.7%). Conclusions: These results can be used to develop an education program to strengthen nurses' managerial cost accounting competencies. Furthermore, it will be helpful to use a basis for the development of cost management curricula for nursing students and on-the-job training courses of nurse managers and executives.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.225-231
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• 2021

Unmet healthcare is an important indicator to measure accessibility of healthcare services. To examine the latest status of unmet healthcare needs in South Korea, the four different data which is composed of nationally representative sample of South Korean population were used; the Korea Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (KNAHANES, 2007-2019), the Community Health Survey (CHS, 2008-2019), the Korea Health Panel Survey (KHP, 2011-2017), and the Korean Welfare Panel Study (KOWEPS, 2006-2019). The proportion of individuals reporting unmet healthcare needs were 5.8% (KNHANES), 5.3% (CHS), and 11.6% (KHP). Annual percentage change (APC) which identifies trend for the follow-up period was -9.5%, -8.0%, and -6.5%, respectively. The proportion of individuals reporting unmet healthcare needs due to cost were 1.1% (KNAHANES), 0.7% (CHS), 2.4% (KHP), and 0.4% (KOWEPS). The APC was -10.5%, -14.2%, -12.2%, and -19.6%, respectively. Compared to last year, the rate of unmet healthcare needs has declined in general. However, the low-income and the elderly population were reporting the highest rate of unmet health care needs, and the disparity between lowest and highest groups were remained. These results suggest that adequate benefit coverage is needed for low-income and elderly population.

• International Journal of Contents
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.76-82
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• 2016

This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of the dual-punishment system by analysis of the financial performance of pharmaceutical companies before and after introduction of the dual-punishment system. This study analyzed the business performance of 136 pharmaceutical companies from 2009 to 2011. The results from paired t-tests found that sales, operating cost, and EBITDA showed significant differences in performance, and, according to the variance analysis, the five groups obtained through a hierarchical cluster analysis differed from each other in sales, operating cost, EBITDA, and research and development cost. Differences in financial performance among the groups seem to be related to the strategy for response to the regulation. The introduction of the dual-punishment system is generally acknowledged to have had positive effects on the pharmaceutical industry. However, some companies appear to be continuing kickback practices.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.186-193
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• 2018

Background: The aim of our study was to review the findings of health insurance fraud investigations and to evaluate their impacts on medical costs for target and non-target organizations. An interrupted time series study design using generalized estimation equations was used to evaluate changes in cost following fraud investigations. Methods: We used National Health Insurance claims data from 2009 to 2015, which included 20,625 medical institutions (1,614 target organizations and 19,011 non-target organizations). Outcome variable included cost change after fraud investigation. Results: Following the initiation of fraud investigations, we found statistically significant reductions in cost level for target organizations (-1.40%, p<0.001). In addition, a reduction in cost trend change per month was found for both target organizations and non-target organizations after fraud investigation (target organizations, -0.33%; non-target organizations of same region, -0.19%; non-target organizations of other regions, -0.17%). Conclusion: This study suggested that fraud investigations are associated with cost reduction in target organization. We also found similar effects of fraud investigations on health expenditure for non-target organizations located in the same region and in different regions. Our finding suggests that fraud investigations are important in controlling the growth of health expenditure. To maximize the effects of fraud investigation on the growth of health expenditure, more organizations needed to be considered as target organizations.

• Journal of the Institute of Convergence Signal Processing
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.45-50
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• 2019

When PPG signal is used in mobile healthcare devices, the accuracy of the measured heartbeat decreases from the influence by the movement of the user. The reason is that the frequency band of the noise overlaps the frequency band of the PPG signal. In order to remove these same noises, the methods using frequency analysis method or application of acceleration sensor have been investigated and showed excellent performance. However, in applying these methods to low-cost healthcare devices, it is difficult to apply these methods because of much processing time and sensor's cost. In order to solve these problems, this study proposed the filter design method using an adaptive notch filter and the fuzzy inference system to extract more accurate heart rate in real time and evaluated its performance. As results, it showed better results than the other methods. Based on the results, when applying the proposed method to design the mobile healthcare device, it is possible to measure the heartbeat more accurately in real time.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.85 no.1
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• pp.11-17
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• 2022

Background: In asthma, consistent control of chronic airway inflammation is crucial, and the use of asthma-controller medication has been emphasized. Our purpose in this study is to compare the incidence of acute exacerbation and healthcare costs related to the use of asthma-controller medication. Methods: By using data collected by the National Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service, we compared one-year clinical outcomes and medical costs from July 2014 to June 2015 (follow-up period) between two groups of patients with asthma who received different prescriptions for recommended asthma-controller medication (inhaled corticosteroids or leukotriene receptor antagonists) at least once from July 2013 to June 2014 (assessment period). Results: There were 51,757 patients who satisfied our inclusion criteria. Among them, 13,702 patients (26.5%) were prescribed a recommended asthma-controller medication during the assessment period. In patients using a recommended asthma-controller medication, the frequency of acute exacerbations decreased in the follow-up period, from 2.7% to 1.1%. The total medical costs of the controller group decreased during the follow-up period compared to the assessment period, from $3,772,692 to $1,985,475. Only 50.9% of patients in the controller group used healthcare services in the follow-up period, and the use of asthma-controller medication decreased in the follow-up period. Conclusion: Overall, patients using a recommended asthma-controller medication showed decreased acute exacerbation and reduced total healthcare cost by half.