• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
• /
• v.15 no.9
• /
• pp.233-242
• /
• 2015

This study was carried out as a preliminary study to analyze how emotion(depression and anxiety) after spouse bereavement in old age affects social interaction and to set a direction of developing programs based on the cause and period of bereavement to promote social interaction for those bereaved people. To that end, welfare facilities and schools for the elderly and churches located in Seoul, and Suwon and Osan areas were visited and surveys were executed on 350 aged people who had experienced spouse bereavement from September 26 through October 25, 2014. Analysis was executed for 325 questionnaires out of the total of 350 using SPSS WIN 20. Study findings are as follows: first, the average of emotion and social interaction due to bereavement was not significantly different between groups; second, the average of emotion and social interaction due to bereavement period was not significantly different between groups; third, the impact of bereavement type and period statistically significant. These findings implies that social interaction programs for the aged people can be developed regardless of bereavement cause or period.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
• /
• v.35 no.5
• /
• pp.425-437
• /
• 2016

Objective:The objective of this study is to develop an ergonomic toilet system along with constituent facilities that can be used with the front-entry sitting method when transferring from wheelchair to the toilet stool, instead of using the back-entry sitting method which is currently used. This system can offer more ease, convenience and safety for wheelchair users when using the restroom. Background: For users with disabilities, even a dedicated handicapped toilet requires maneuvering, especially when in a wheelchair. To transfer from wheelchair to the current back-entry sitting toilet, users need to get closer to the toilet and then turn or twist after erecting their body to get onto the toilet. This method induces inconvenience as well as secondary injury by falling when transferring to/from toilet. Method: To design a front-entry sitting toilet system, an ergonomics approach was applied which introduces a new design concept for people using wheelchairs. Using this toilet system, the wheelchair users don't need to turn or twist but can simply slide forward off the wheelchair directly onto the toilet stool in an easier and safer way. Results: The newly developed front-entry sitting toilet system is easier and safer for wheelchair users, and also space efficient requiring only two-thirds of the space of existing handicapped toilet. It is also usable by both individuals with disabilities and the general population. Conclusion: With the spread of the front-entry sitting toilet system developed in this study, wheelchair users can benefit from enhanced convenience and safety as well as significant restroom space savings. Additional effects can also be achieved such as improved self-esteem of people with disabilities by enabling to use the toilet on their own. Application: The newly developed front-entry sitting toilet system should enhance toilet accessibility to wheelchair users and the elderly. Introduction is needed with efforts at the national policy level and a macroscopic objective to promote the health and safety of the handicapped.

• The Journal of the Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
• /
• v.13 no.2
• /
• pp.217-223
• /
• 2013

Population aging is a shift in the distribution of a country's population towards older ages. This is usually reflected in an increase in the population's mean and median ages, a decline in the proportion of the population composed of children, and a rise in the proportion of the population that is elderly. Population ageing is widespread across the world. Barrier-free or Design for All concept consists of modifying buildings or facilities so that they can be used by people who are disabled or have physical impairments. Design for All criteria are aimed at ensuring that everyone can participate in the Information society. Safety-related products being easy to adapt according to different needs, or using standardized interfaces that can be accessed simply by using assistive technology. To this end, policy makers and service providers, especially in the ubiquitous technologies, produce new technologies, products, services and applications for pedestrians.

• Health Policy and Management
• /
• v.24 no.1
• /
• pp.35-46
• /
• 2014

Background: This paper describes the relationship and effect of health examination on personal medical cost by identifying the difference of the cost for medical care in physician visit between the population without and with health examination. Methods: After classifying into three cohorts in which, independent variables were designed according to the Andersen's behavioral model, the association of personal medical cost for medical care and prescription drugs which is dependent variable was analyzed by t-test and Mann-Whitney test for description and gamma regression model for inference. Results: In personal average medical cost, the population with health examination paid significantly more than without health examination, 11.6% more in cohort 2008, 26.6% more in cohort 2009, and 48.0% more in combined cohort. The odds ratio on medical expenditure of outpatients with health examination was 1.067, 1.126, 1.398 significantly in cohort 2008, 2009, and combined cohort respectively, comparing to the group without health examination. In independent variables, that is female, the elderly, never married, non-working, non-metropolitan, the higher family income, the smaller family size, people with disability, the people with chronic disease, and people with health examination have significantly being paid more tendency showing positive association with medical cost. Conclusion: This result showed that medical expenditure in physician visit has been increased after taking a health examination. Therefore reasonable limitation of getting preventive medical service is suggested to avoid medical shopping around and reduce being repeated health examination by unifying control to find out easily the clinical results from various medical facilities.

• Journal of agricultural medicine and community health
• /
• v.16 no.2
• /
• pp.179-194
• /
• 1991

Despite its universal coverage of health insurance, the rural health insurance program(RHIP) stands at the crossroads in Korea. The RHIP has weaknesses in stability of financing, problems of inequities in the provision of health services and has suffered from high cost of running the program. The author has analyzed these problems from the perspective of health insurance policy and presented several options for improvement. First of all, this study urged the importance of a firm Governmental commitment of RHIP with the 50% subsidization of contributions as the Government had promised, instead of the current 40%. This can be justified from the 20% subsidization by the Government for the contributions of private school teachers and their dependents, who belong to richer segments of the population. Second, various cost containment measures ought to be sought curbing the rising demand for medical through strengthening health education and increasing individual responsibility, and tightening the claim review process. Third, this study requires the Government to run a demonstration project on the introduction of case payment system for primary health care. Fourth introducing an income-related cost sharing scheme is another possibility. Reforming the cost sharing formula for large medical expenditures is recommendable for a beginning. This measure can take the form of tax credit for medical expenditures of the poor. Fifth, the degree of financial adjustment among health insurance plans should be levelled up for enhancing stability of RHIP and social solidarity. Sixth, health policy should be redirected toward development of rural health resources and higher priority should be put on relieving difficulties in access to care. Seventh. the insurance plan owned-hospital needs to be developed or provision of health services in the medically underserved areas, and the need of such facilities is particularly acute for geriatric care, rehabilitation and renal dialysis, etc. Eighth, more generous insurance benefits are required of the elderly who are suffering the most : elimination of the maximum 180 days of benefit period and provision of glasses and artificial dentures, etc. Ninth. the economies of scale principle is working for the operating expenses of regional self-employed insurance plan. Thus, measures should be instituted to pursue an optimum size of health insurance plans. Lastly, excessive dependence on exclusion items is an evil so that some radical remedies are urgently required to cut them.

• Korean Institute of Interior Design Journal
• /
• v.17 no.5
• /
• pp.150-156
• /
• 2008

The 'Environmental Psychology and Behavior Studies' which started from the purpose of "Building the comfortable environment for people", is one of the most essential research area in architecture and intoner design field because of the basis of humanbeing matters. As the development of science and industries, the social circumstances have been more complicated and diversified. As a result, humanbeing require much humanized and high level of quality in space design as well as environmental design. In case of domestic research situation, the research of environmental psychology and behavior studies in architecture and interior design fields, haven't been applied fully in their potential abilities due to the shortage of research history, complexity of humanbeing researches and the vagueness of studies as a major fields. Thus, my purpose of studying is to analizing the previous research tendencies focus on the domestic thesis since 1980 to 2006 from the related research Institutes. Final findings are as follows ; 1. Steadily increasing tile interest ratio of the research field of environmental psychology and behavior studies 2. Concentration of research target spaces are higher from the residential > elderly facilities > educational > and medical spaces. 3. The preference of research theme showed the environmental psychology fundamentals > behavior studies > general studies of environmental psychology > emotional engineering > human factors engineering. 4. Results of crossing analysis ; 1)Residential spaces were the main spaces for main research theme. 2)Main theme used in target spaces were 'environmental psychology fundamentals' and "behavior studies'. 3)Main research methods for the most target spaces were 'sample research' methods.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
• /
• v.15 no.6
• /
• pp.125-135
• /
• 2015

As the elderly and the disabled populations increase, the importance of the universal design is more highlighted to form equal and secured environment. Particularly, as the desire for the cultural experience has grown, investment and construction of the cultural space are actively carried forward at the state level, but there are a lot of restrictive elements for the disadvantaged to have the cultural experience in the public facilities. To analyze these elements, investigation into the present conditions and analysis of use evaluation were conducted over the construction environment of museums, the public cultural space, in terms of the visually handicapped and non-handicapped people. Through the literature review, this study understood the concept and principle of the universal design, analyzed and reclassified the existing evaluation elements. As a result of evaluating museums in the country based on the analyzed evaluation elements, the information, environment and supplement points in service were investigated for the visually handicapped to tour museums and remedies were drawn. This study tries to consider these disadvantaged and to suggest evaluation elements and remedies for environment construction, so that everyone can do pleasant activities.

• Smart Media Journal
• /
• v.1 no.4
• /
• pp.52-58
• /
• 2012

In recent years the combination of IT and BT for U-Healthcare Medical Services has attracted popular attention as an alternative for solving health problems due to aging issue. Active oxygen as free radicals causes unstable state of the body resulting to other disease on which approximate 90% of the diseases are associated with active oxygen. The severity is even higher along with increasing age. Therefore, there is a need for systematic management of active oxygen saturation for the elderly and chronic patients. In this paper, the data about active oxygen measurements from the body measurement is sent to the data storage of medical facilities by the service provider. Medical information is measured by devices provided complying with the standard, support and information using Bluetooth communication. Users can check their health status themselves using the proposed system through 3G/4G mobile devices like smart phone to medical institutions in which the smart phone act as a gateway for medical data transferred from patient to medical institutions and vice versa. Users can get and experience a diagnosis and effective U-Environmental Health Services from Medical institutions anywhere using the proposed built system.

• The Journal of the Korea institute of electronic communication sciences
• /
• v.12 no.2
• /
• pp.255-260
• /
• 2017

In Korea, traffic accidents between pedestrians and vehicles in 2015 account for 38.8% of all accidents. This study proposes a system design that can measure the risk of conflict between a vehicle and a pedestrian. Firstly the systemdetect and estimate the position, speed, and directional data of the vehicle and the pedestrian. And then it estimate the conflict point between a vehicle and a pedestrian. The risk of conflict is quantified by estimating the pedestrian safety margin (PSM), which is the time difference between the arrival of the pedestrian at the crossing point to the point of conflict and the vehicle approaching the point. In this system each data is acquired through an external monitoring based evaluation module and an individual wearing module. In the future, such a system can be used for decision making such as the design of road hazard improvement facilities and the designation of the elderly protection area.

• Journal of the Korean housing association
• /
• v.20 no.6
• /
• pp.89-99
• /
• 2009

The purpose of this research is to determine the deterioration characteristics of high-rise and high-density apartment complexes in 1st period new towns in order to regenerate apartments as sustainable residential environments in Korea. For this purpose, the level of deterioration was evaluated by using 'evaluating indicators of the level of deterioration of high-rise and high-density apartments'. The deterioration characteristics were determined inclusively and concretely based on evaluation results. In addition, the deterioration level according to residents' awareness of the deterioration of their apartment was evaluated. This study was conducted by methods of field data collection, staff interview, field measurement, and resident survey according to the measurement of the evaluating indicators. And the re-organized questionnaire based on the evaluating indicators was utilized for a survey of resident's awareness. The results are as follows: In the physical dimensions of apartments, the deterioration characteristics included deteriorated equipment and a decline in structural performance due to the aging of the apartment, a shortage of parking spaces, and the low flexibility of the bearing wall structure, etc. In terms of the social dimensions, the apartments showed an increase in the number of elderly households, a shortage of community facilities, and a lack of the opportunity for community participation etc. In terms of the economic dimensions, the apartments showed limitations in maintenance & repair and a lack of environmentally friendly features.