• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.13 no.12
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• pp.41-52
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• 2015

Purpose - Given globalization, the new niche market of medical tourism is likely to experience sustainable growth for various reasons, such as aging populations and a shift in the medical consumerism paradigm toward prevention. Importantly, understanding medical customers' behavior is necessary to benefit from a competitive advantage in this industry. The existing research primarily accessed the key factors of medical quality and costs to explain health customers' behavior but is limited in terms of enabling an understanding of the decision process. This limitation exists because, given the intangibility and greater associated risks in the highly professional industry of international medical tourism, most customers lack the knowledge and experience needed to evaluate the central factors-such as the medical competence of health care countries-before purchases. Therefore, they actively search for useful information through various distributions to reduce uncertainty and to make better choices. Interestingly, most of these information channels are associated with word-of-mouth (WOM). However, no evidence is found in the literature to estimate the effect of WOM in the medical tourism field. Thus, this study focuses on WOM to explore its interaction with key medical characteristic factors and the attractiveness of destinations referred to by sources. This study also affects customers' evaluations and, in turn, influences their intention to seek health care services abroad. Research design, data, and methodology - The literature review addressed an interesting research model for estimating the relations among WOM, medical characteristics, attractiveness, and customers' choice intention regarding international health care. In the key economic regions in China, such as Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Shandong, and Guangdong, 2,500 survey questionnaires were distributed to potential customers of different ages, education, and income levels. A resulting 1,717 (68.68 percent of the original 2,500) usable surveys were obtained for analysis. Moderated regression analysis was used to determine the effects of WOM in the decision process regarding international health care destinations. Results - The results indicate that WOM is a good moderator of the relationships between the factors evaluated by sources and customers. More importantly, the WOM effects reflect the factors of tie strength, credibility, and vividness. The results also reveal that, given the moderating role of WOM, the intention of potential Chinese customers to seek the referred health care country varies according to the medical characteristics of medical competency and reputation as evaluated by customers. In contrast, the travel attractiveness of the attractions, facilities, accessibility, and social environment are critical determinants of destination choice intention. Conclusions - The moderating role of WOM has been confirmed through the international healthcare destination selection process. Medical tourism managers should user WOM as an effective marketing tool for industry development. Specially, marketers should consider the effects of WOM determinants, such as tie strength, credibility, and vividness, to develop an effective strategy. Furthermore, this study estimates the factors that affect customers' selection of medical tourism destinations. Health care managers or policy makers should consider a broad variety of variables that may attract more Chinese customers to international health care.

• Journal of agricultural medicine and community health
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• v.40 no.2
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• pp.72-79
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• 2015

Objectives: To identify the importance of preventing tuberculosis for HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) infectees and to monitor their management of health, we investigated the proportion of HIV-TB (Tuberculosis) deaths among the HIV deaths and its related factors. Methods: Data for HIV deaths from 2002 to 2010 was acquired from Statistics Korea, after which the HIV deaths were reclassified into HIV-TB deaths or other deaths according to the KCD (Korean Classification of Diseases). We analyzed the proportion of HIV-TB deaths among HIV disease deaths and the relationship between HIV-TB deaths and related variables such as sex, age, educational level, marital status, etc. Results: There were 774 HIV deaths in South Korea between 2002 and 2010. TB was the main cause of death in 10.1% of all HIV deaths. The total proportion of HIV-TB deaths was 10.1% but its proportion reached 16.3% between 2005-2007 and then decreased to 4% in 2010. Also, the proportion of HIV-TB deaths was significantly high in the young age groups, but its proportion was significantly low in married groups and well educated groups (p<0.05). Conclusions: The result implies that the policy that takes care of HIV infectee regarding TB prevention has been getting systemized on a national scale. Also, HIV-TB deaths have been affected by social factors such as education and marriage status.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.12 no.5
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• pp.295-303
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• 2014

This study has tried to find the gap of health promoting behavior and the lower level-health responsibility, physical activity, self-actualization, stress management and self-efficacy-between new freshmen and other university students in dormitories who have taken health education as an elective course through health education. With 105 students conducted self-answering survey. It was conducted from June 12 to June 13 of the year 2013. Analysis has been conducted into 5-point scale in every parts of health promoting behavior, 4-point scale in self-efficacy. As a result of the study, after health education, the increasing level of the score was bigger than general university students in preceding research before education; from this, we could interpret that the peers who live together lead positive competition. For before-and-after affects of education, after-education score increased statistically significantly higher from before-education score for both freshmen and other students on every item of the survey. Especially, self-efficacy and stress management, which are the lower level of health promoting behavior, have shown statistic significance of health education. When comparing freshmen and other students, the item that showed significant difference was 'self-efficacy,' and for both before and after health education, other students had higher score than freshmen. Based on the result of the analysis, for those who live together with group of people such as in-dorm students, group education is preferred to personal education; in addition, when selecting health education recipients, better achievement of education will be expected by primarily educating students who have lower level of self-efficacy and stress, especially freshmen who have lower self-efficacy level than other students in university.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.14 no.9
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• pp.379-387
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• 2016

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between maternal age and infant mortality in Korea(n=617,867). Data of Korean vital statistics linked National Infant Mortality Survey conducted on births in 1999 were used in this study. The odds ratios (ORs) of infant death by maternal age were estimated with the multiple logistic regression model, adjusting for gender, plurality, birth order, low birth weight, and congenital malformation. After adjusting for the relevant variables, the odds of infant death in the group of maternal age with less than 20 years(Odds ratio [OR], 5.29, 95% confidence interval [CI], 3.51-7.98), 20-24 years(OR, 1.44, 95% CI, 1.23-1.69), 35-39 years(OR, 1.28, 95% CI, 1.11-1.46), and more than 40 years(OR, 1.94, 95% CI, 1.53-2.45) was higher than that of reference group(25-29 years). In conclusion, the higher infant mortality in the group of maternal age with less than 25 years and more than 35 years in Korea appears to be due to higher proportion of low birth weight and pre-term birth. Prenatal care intervention programs which tackle biological factors for advanced maternal age and address socio-economic problems and social stigma for early maternal age should be devised.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Pharmacy
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.238-246
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• 2019

Background: In South Korea, as an aged society, an understanding of dementia and its risk factors is important from clinical and healthcare policy perspectives. Relationship between cognitive impairment and body weight or weight changes have been reported, but these were contradictory. We have evaluated the association between weight changes and cognitive decline using national level longitudinal data. Methods: Data from the Korean Longitudinal Study of Ageing from 2006 to 2012 were used. Association between weight changes and decline in cognitive function as measured by K-MMSE (the Korean version of the Mini-mental state examination) score was assessed by multivariate logistic regression. Weight changes were calculated from 1st wave and 3rd wave survey data, and classified into five groups as stable, increases, decreases of >10%, or 5%-10%. Results: About 37% of the total participants (n=4,512) were 65 years or older. These participants made up the largest proportion of the groups with weight change exceeding 10%. Multivariate logistic regression analyses revealed that weight changes exceeding 10% (10% increase vs stable, adjusted OR [aOR] 1.47, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.11-1.95; 10% decrease vs stable, aOR 1.44, 95% CI 1.11-1.88) were significant predictive factors for decline in cognitive function. In subgroup analyses, the association between weight changes and cognitive decline was significant in males aged over 65 years and in normal BMI groups. Conclusion: Weight changes, both increases and decreases exceeding 10% of baseline, were significantly associated with declines in cognitive function among older adults in South Korea.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.185-196
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• 2005

Although medical exposure from diagnostic radiology procedures such as conventional x-rays, CT and PET scans is necessary for healthcare purposes, understanding its characteristics and size of the resulting radiation dose to patients is much of worth because medical radiation constitutes the largest artificial source of exposure and the medical exposure is in a trend of fast increasing particularly in the developed society. Annual collective doses and per-caput effective doses from different radiology procedures in Korea were estimated by combining the effective dose estimates per single medical procedure and the health insurance statistics in 2002. Values of the effective dose per single procedure were compiled from different sources including NRPB reports, ICRP 80, MIRDOSE3.1 code and independent computations of the authors. The annual collective dose reaches 27440 man-Sv (diagnostic radiology: 22880 man-Sv, nuclear medicine: 4560 man-Sv) which is reduced to the annual per-caput effective dose of 0.58 mSv by dividing by the national population of 47.7 millions. The collective dose is far larger than that of occupational exposures, in the country operated 16 nuclear power plants in 2002, which is no more than 70 man-Sv in the same year. It is particularly noted that the collective dose due to CT scans amounts 9960 man-Sv. These results implies that the national policy for radiation protection should pay much more attention to optimization of patient doses in medicine.

• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.67-77
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• 2020

Background: As of 2016, average Koreans sleep 7 hours and 42 minutes, the lowest figure among Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development(OECD) countries, and the number of people with sleep disorders reached 561,000. Accordingly, the government has promoted the provision of 'Multiple Sleep Test' to strengthen the diagnosis service for patients with 'sleep disorder' in july 2018. As a result, healthcare costs for patients with sleep disorder is on the rise every year. In this study, we utilized 'Appropriate Sleep' criteria of United States's National Sleep Foundation(NSF) then investigated Korean's sleep pertinence using ｢7th National Health and Nutrition Survey for 2016-2018」 by different occupational type, demographic characteristics, socio-economic characteristics, and health behaviors. Methods: We performed descriptive analysis to examine differences of sleep appropriateness by various sample characteristics. Multivariate logistic regression models were used to examine sleep appropriateness by occupational type and other variables. We also analyzed subgroup models to investigate. Results: As a result, a total of 1,948 (18.37%) study subjects experienced in-appropriate sleep. Results of the Multivariate logistic regression analysis revealed that blue color group had a higher odds ratio (OR) for experiencing in-appropriate sleep (OR=1.179). In addition, the odds ratio of experienced in-appropriate sleep among the elderly aged 70 and over was 2.698, and the odds ratio of the overstressed group was 1.299. Furthermore, sub-group analysis showed that blue color job of female(Or=1.334), high school or below(OR=1.404), divorce/death/separation(OR=2.039), 25%ile-50%lie income group(OR=1.411) more likely experienced in-appropriate sleep. Conclusion: Growing sleep disorder patients and related health care costs are expected. Government should apply detailed 'total periodic sleep disorder management policy' including pre-consultation, examination, diagnosis, treatment, post-consultation, self-management especially to vulnerable population that this study found.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.11 no.11
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• pp.289-304
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• 2013

In Korea the consumption of coffee has been continuously increased last 10 years. During the period the market size and the numbers of the coffee shop also has been expanded dramatically. The purpose of this study was to examine whether the consumer's selection attributes of coffee shop affect the revisit intention of coffee shop and the brand trust had moderating effects between consumption attributes and revisit intention. Also it was analyzed whether there were statistic differences according to the demographic characteristics. For this study the survey was conducted on Seoul City and Kyeongki-do province and 600 questionnaires were distributed and 480 were collected and 470 samples were analyzed. The results of this study were as follows. All the factors of the consumer's consumption attributes of coffee shop had affected the revisit intention. And the factors of brand trust had moderating effects on revisit intention. There were statistic difference by gender for the additional services and there were also statistic difference according to the age group for the new technology environmental service of the inside of coffee shop. The implications of this study were the selection attributes of coffee shop were diverse and the brand trust were considered significant and the consumer's preferences were different according demographic characteristics such as gender, age, and incomes.

• Journal of Service Research and Studies
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.31-42
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• 2020

This study is a study on the performance of design services among export voucher projects. In particular, we have identified the actual state of use of design services from the perspective of participating companies and the corresponding problems. The purpose of the study is to provide basic data for the preparation of successful support plans in the field of design services. This study designed a quantitative survey to measure accurate performance of design services using archive records, and the survey was sent three times in total to 135 participating companies. A significant achievement of design services the study found is that the role of design were important in the export of the nation's main industries such as medical/biological/healthcare and electrical/electronic products. In addition, we could see that all participating companies were using design services regardless of the difference in sales. In particular, 96% of participating companies answered that the design service effect was the most effective service. As a result, it proved the importance of design services in export voucher projects, and suggested the importance of introducing a management system as a direction for the development of design services in future export voucher projects. He majored in advertising design at Hongik University's Graduate School of Industrial Art and at the Korea Institute of Design Promotion. It carries out the government's design policy such as design research, design education, and corporate design support. He is currently working as an Invited Designer by Korea Design Exhibition.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.17 no.12
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• pp.249-254
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• 2019

According to the recent expansion of the network environment, the spread of smart devices is continuously increasing. With the spread of smart devices such as smart phones, smart pads and wearables, changes are taking place in smart technologies and IT convergence technologies. The development of smart technology is a key element of the 4th industrial technology. The Fourth Industrial Revolution expanded the new service-based industry by adding intelligence to residential, industrial and production environments using IT convergence and smart devices. Research on providing various services using smart technologies, such as smart home, smart factory, smart farm, and smart healthcare, is being conducted in variety. In particular, There is a sharp rise in smart homes due to the proliferation of IoT devices and the growth of sensor technology, control technology, applications, data management, and cloud services. Smart home services using smart technology provide residents with convenient, beneficial services and environments. Smart home service has complemented the existing home network service, but there still are flaws to be modified. In other words, the spread of smart devices, the development of service provider-oriented services, and the interlocking of services have limitations in providing services in consideration of user environment and user state. In order to solve this problem, this study proposes a smart home service system that considers the situation of the elderly.