• YAKHAK HOEJI
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• v.58 no.1
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• pp.40-46
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• 2014

Drugs with a narrow therapeutic index (NTI) require very precise dosing. Warfarin and digoxin are the examples of NTI-drugs and dosing of them varies widely for different patients. However, in South Korea, only two strengths of warfarin and one of digoxin are commercially available. This is a big barrier for the precise dispensing and has potential safety risks to patients, particularly to elderly patients. To find a potential solution to the problem, an analysis of the prescribed doses and dispensing patterns of those drugs was performed. Data were collected by computer-facilitated prescription review in a university hospital. The period screened was from May 1st, 2012 to April 30th, 2013. All the prescriptions with either warfarin or digoxin tablets were selected for this study and dispensing patterns were analyzed according to the prescribed doses. A total of 17,017 warfarin prescriptions were analyzed; 8,148 for inpatient prescriptions, 8,869 for outpatient prescriptions, respectively. Of the 23 kinds of prescribed doses, 2 mg (19.9%) was most frequent, followed by 3 mg (13.2%) and 2.5 mg (11.7%). By analyzing the dispensing patterns, 60.3% (10,253) of the prescriptions required pill splitting and 72.0% of them were for the patients 65 years old and over. On the other hand, 4,350 digoxin prescriptions were included in this study. Of the 6 kinds of prescribed doses, 0.125 mg (71.2%) was most frequent, followed by 0.0625 mg (20.2%). Among the prescriptions for digoxin, 92.0% (3,998) should be split and 65.7% of them were for the patients aged 65 years and over. Despite limitations of strengths, various doses of warfarin and digoxin were prescribed. Furthermore, more than half of the prescriptions that required pill splitting were for elderly patients. The results from this study suggest that different strengths of warfarin and digoxin should be provided for accuracy of dispensing and safety for patients receiving them.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Pharmacy
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.249-255
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• 2011

Objective: To examine the drug use (prescribing) pattern of serious drug-drug interactions (DDIs, contraindicated drug interactions) using real world data. Prescription patterns were examined in terms of dispensing types. Method: Retrospective drug utilization review (DUR) study was performed. One hundred and six datasets of serious DDIs (DDI pairs) were determined among DDI datasets that Ministry of Health & Welfare announced for the DUR system from 2004 to 2005. Electronically transacted ambulatory patients' prescription database to Health Insurance Assessment and Review Services (HIRA) from July, 2005 to June, 2006 was collected with personal information deidentified and analyzed in terms of types of dispensing as a contributing factor. Results: After prescription data analysis per each patient, total number of DDI cases using 95 DDI pairs was 5,511, which accounted for 2.6 cases per patients. DDI cases between two drugs from each of community pharmacy dispensing- type prescription were considerable (63% vs. 24% in those from each of in-institutional dispensing-type prescription and vs. 13% in those from a community pharmacy dispensing-type prescription and an in-institutional dispensingtype prescription). Conclusions: DDI cases from different prescribers were found to be significant. Thus, the concurrent DUR process between prescriptions from different physicians and institutions should be implemented for the safe drug use.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.34 no.12
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• pp.1837-1842
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• 2010

Studies on alternative energy have been carried out for many decades because of the accelerated exhaustion of fuel. While the efficacy of solar cells is still low in comparison with that of nuclear power, solar cells have been highlighted as potential sources of alternative energy because they are environmentally friendly and have a source of unlimited energy, namely, the sun. In this study, the optimum efficiency of solar cells was simulated as a function of the incident angle of sunlight and the geometric shapes of patterns using MATLAB and MathCAD software. The foremost efficiency of the solar cell was found to be 1.10 when the thickness and width of the patterns were in the range 25-$50{\mu}m$ and 50-$100{\mu}m$, respectively. To achieve the 25 um thick layer, 100,000 cps silver paste and 500 um orifice tip has been successfully implemented with Micro-Dispensing Deposition Writing.

• 대한예방의학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2001.10a
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• pp.173-174
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• 2001

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.20-44
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• 2004

The National Health Insurance Expenditure has been increased rapidly since the introduction of the separation of prescription and dispensing in 2000, and this trend of rapid growth in overall spendings rate has been observed predominantly among medical practitioners. This study was conducted to investigate the growth rate and distributional changes in private medical practitioners' expenses from 1999 to 2002 and its determinants using the National Health Insurance claims data. The total increasing rate of all medical practitioners' expenditure paid by the National Health Insurance between 1999 and 2002 was $41.71\%$, which exceeding that of general hospitals by $20\%$p. But the income distribution among each practitioner was improved as the changes in Gini coefficient(from 0.40 to 0.38) and decile distribution ratio(from 0.25 to 0.29) during the same period showed. However, this improvement in distributional patterns is not enough since even in 2002 it turned out that the highest $10\%$ income group earned 33times more than the lowest $10\%$ income group did. Also, higher Gini coefficient was observed in larger cities and some department like plastic surgery, obstetrics and gynecology. The major causes of this differentials in medical practitioners' expenses were factors related to medical demand like proportion of old population, residential economic status in a given area. In addition, providers' economic incentives also played an important role in determining their income distribution. The large income differentials among physicians may imply a skewed distribution of patients and thus long waiting time, inefficient utilization of resources and potential inadequate quality of care. In this sense, unreasonable distributional gaps should be reduced, so effective measures as well as ongoing monitoring would be necessary to correct current distributional problems.

• The Korean Journal of Pain
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.41-50
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• 2024

Background: Recognizing the seriousness of the misuse and abuse of medical narcotics, the South Korean government introduced the world's first narcotic management system, the Narcotics Information Management System (NIMS). This study aimed to explore the recent one-year opioid prescribing patterns in South Korea using the NIMS database. Methods: This study analyzed opioid prescription records in South Korea for the year 2022, utilizing the dispensing/administration dataset provided by NIMS. Public data from the Korean Statistical Information Service were also utilized to explore prescription trends over the past four years. The examination covered 16 different opioid analgesics, assessed by the total number of units prescribed based on routes of administration, type of institutions, and patients' sex and age group. Additionally, the disposal rate for each ingredient was computed. Results: In total, 206,941 records of 87,792,968 opioid analgesic units were analyzed. Recently, the overall quantity of prescribed opioid analgesic units has remained relatively stable. The most prescribed ingredient was oral oxycodone, followed by tapentadol and sublingual fentanyl. Tertiary hospitals had the highest number of dispensed units (49.4%), followed by community pharmacies (40.2%). The highest number of prescribed units was attributed to male patients in their 60s. The disposal rates of the oral and transdermal formulations were less than 0.1%. Conclusions: Opioid prescription in South Korea features a high proportion of oral formulations, tertiary hospital administration, pharmacy dispensing, and elderly patients. Sustained education and surveillance of patients and healthcare providers is required.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.352-356
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• 2013

We developed a novel fabrication method of polydimethylsioxane (PDMS) lens, which can easily control the shapes of the lens using soft lithography with common photolithography and water droplet molding. A mold for PDMS lens was prepared by patterning of hydrophobic photoresist on the hydrophilic substrate and dispensing small water droplets onto the predefined hydrophilic patterns. The size of patterns determined the dimension of the lens and the dispensed volume of the water droplet decided the radius of curvature of the PDMS lens independently. The water droplet with photoresist pattern played a robustly fixed mold for lens due to difference in wettability. The radius of curvature could be calculated theoretically because the water droplets could approximate spherical cap on the substrate. Finally, concave and convex PDMS lenses which could reduce or magnify optically were fabricated by curing of PDMS on the prepared mold. The measured radii of the fabricated PDMS lenses were well matched with the estimated values. We believe that our simple and efficient fabrication method can be adopted to PDMS microlens and extended to micro optical device, lab on a chip, and sensor technology.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.33-40
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• 2012

The scaffold serves as 3D substrate for the cells adhesion and mechanical support for the newly grown tissue by maintaining the 3D structure for the regeneration of tissue and organ. In this paper, we proposed integrated scaffold fabrication system using multi-axis rapid prototyping (RP) technology. It can fabricate various types of scaffolds: arbitrary sculptured shape, primitive shape, and tube shape scaffolds by layered dispensing biocompatible/ biodegradable polymer strands in designated patterns. In order to fabricate the 3D scaffold, we need to generate the plotting path way for the scaffold fabrication system. We design a data processing program - scaffold plotting software, which can convert the 3D STL file, primitive and tube model images into the NC code for the system. Finally, we fabricated the customized 3D scaffolds with high accuracy using the plotting software and the fabrication system.

• Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers
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• v.42 no.6
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• pp.370-376
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• 2016

Manufacturing data analysis and its applications are getting a huge popularity in various industries. In spite of the fast advancement in the big data analysis technology, however, the manufacturing quality data monitored from the automated inspection system sometimes is not reliable enough due to the complex patterns of product quality. In this study, thus, we aim to define the level of trusty of an automated quality inspection system and improve the reliability of the quality inspection data. By correlation analysis and feature selection, this paper presents a method of improving the inspection accuracy and efficiency in an SVM-based automatic product quality inspection system using thermal image data in an auto part manufacturing case. The proposed method is implemented in the sealer dispensing process of the automobile manufacturing and verified by the analysis of the optimal feature selection from the quality analysis results.

• Journal of the Korean Vacuum Society
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.39-45
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• 2004

Ultraviolet-nanoimprint lithography (UV-NIL) is a promising method for cost-effectively defining nanoscale structures at room temperature and low pressure. A 5${\times}$5${\times}$0.09 in. quartz stamp is fabricated using the etch process in which a Cr film was employed as a hard mask for transferring nanostructures onto the quartz plate. FAS(Fluoroalkanesilane) is used as a material for anti-adhesion surface treatment on the stamp and a thin organic film to improve adhesion on a wafer is formed by spin-coating. The low viscosity resin droplets with a nanometer scale volume are dispensed on the whole area of the coated wafer. The UV-NIL experiments have been performed using the EVG620-NIL. 370 nm - 1 m features on the stamp have been transferred to the thin resin layer on the wafer using the multi-dispensing method and UV-NIL process. We have measured the imprinted patterns and residual layer using SEM and AFM to evaluate the potential of the process.