Minister Park Young-sun: "Non-face-to-face Medical Care and Digital Health Are Central"

2020 Second Half Economic Policy Direction
Joint Briefing by Ministry of SMEs and Startups and Related Ministries

Park Young-sun, Minister of SMEs and Startups

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Daeseop] "In the non-face-to-face industry, the medical sector is centered on digital health."

Park Young-sun, Minister of SMEs and Startups, said this on the afternoon of the 1st at the joint briefing of related ministries on the economic policy direction for the second half of 2020 held at the Government Seoul Office Building, adding, "I understand that the Ministry of Health and Welfare has decided to rename the part related to telemedicine as non-face-to-face medical care."

After the government joint briefing, Minister Park provided additional supplementary explanations following Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Strategy and Finance Hong Nam-ki's response to a question regarding the future allowance of telemedicine.

Minister Park emphasized, "A demonstration project for (non-face-to-face medical care) is underway in the Gangwon-do Digital Healthcare Regulatory Free Zone. We are always communicating with the Medical Association regarding the demonstration project and are proceeding step by step."

Earlier in the Q&A session, when asked whether the contents such as remote health management included in the Korean New Deal project for fostering the non-face-to-face industry were intended with the future allowance of telemedicine in mind, Deputy Prime Minister Hong Nam-ki said, "There is no intention to change the public medical system."

Deputy Prime Minister Hong explained, "The matters included in the Korean New Deal are being promoted from the perspective of fostering the non-face-to-face industry after post-COVID-19. The priority is to improve public medical convenience through non-face-to-face medical services. Separately, the Ministry of Health and Welfare and related ministries will create measures, and the Ministry of Strategy and Finance will actively support them. I think this is a matter on a different level from telemedicine."

The demonstration period for the non-face-to-face medical care project under the Digital Healthcare Regulatory Free Zone, which the Ministry of SMEs and Startups and Gangwon-do officially started on the 27th of last month, is until July 2021. The demonstration targets are 200 patients each with diabetes and hypertension.

About 30 returning patients with diabetes and hypertension living in remote areas within Gangwon-do will be prioritized and provided with mobile healthcare devices equipped with Bluetooth functions (medical devices for measuring diabetes and blood pressure). Patients will transmit their daily blood sugar and blood pressure data to their attending physicians remotely via an application. Physicians will provide more accurate diagnosis and prescription services through daily monitoring of the accumulated medical information of patients.

Until now, direct non-face-to-face medical acts between doctors and patients in the private sector were prohibited due to medical law (Article 34 on telemedicine) regulations, but by designating the Regulatory Free Zone, regulations are temporarily relaxed, making it significant as the first domestic private sector demonstration of non-face-to-face medical care centered on primary medical institutions.

The Ministry of SMEs and Startups and Gangwon-do plan to verify the stability and validity of the medical information collection system through this demonstration, allowing primary medical institutions to utilize the collected information for both non-face-to-face and face-to-face medical care. Additionally, the demonstration results accumulated through remote monitoring between doctors and patients will be reflected in more advanced demonstrations and the establishment of non-face-to-face medical policies.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.