[In-Depth Look] The Emergence of Medical Platforms

At some point in the 1970s, my mother suddenly fell ill and asked me to bring a doctor home. Back then, house calls were common. I vividly recall the memory of crying uncontrollably, fearing my mother might pass away, as I brought the doctor to our house. The doctor, dressed in a white coat, treated my mother at home. I don’t clearly remember if injections were given or medicine was prepared, but since there were no credit cards at the time, the treatment fee was paid with a 100-won bill. This vivid memory from 50 years ago shows a tremendous change in systems, processes, and technology compared to today.

Fifteen years ago, I was involved in a project with the Ministry of Health and Welfare to share information among public hospitals nationwide. If the project had been successfully completed, videos taken in provincial areas could be used immediately at large metropolitan general hospitals. It was a project that could have significantly saved national costs and time caused by redundant procedures, but due to the lack of social conditions, it was only prepared and never implemented. From the patient’s perspective, it meant receiving priority care at the nearest medical center and then finding a hospital capable of further treatment. It was a system that bought precious time to sustain life and a valuable national attempt to reduce the distance between patients and hospitals. Nowadays, with the development of cloud technology that did not exist back then, such a project could be completed immediately if desired. Since it was a project carried out with considerable tax funds, the data from that time must be stored somewhere for future use. I hope the day will come when it sees the light of day.

Considering the current technological stage and social maturity, the inconvenience of waiting at hospitals can be eliminated rather than just reduced. Patients can make reservations through an app connected to the hospital’s Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system and visit the hospital at the scheduled time for treatment. The app notifies patients of their appointment times to help them arrive punctually. It is no longer appropriate in this day and age for patients to bring paper prescriptions directly to pharmacies. If prescriptions are uploaded to the cloud by the hospital, pharmacies can verify the patient’s identity and access the prescriptions directly from the cloud. Taking the service one step further, home delivery of medicine would be a good idea. This is a patient-centered process improvement that also creates jobs, making it a win-win brought about by technological advancement. Of course, personal insurance claims, which involve submitting prescriptions or receipts and receiving insurance payments, can also be easily handled with the help of cloud technology or fintech.

In the era of the sharing economy, some use of personal information is becoming acceptable. I believe that medical information should be shared as necessary for the benefit of patients. The social trend of online window shopping followed by offline purchases is accelerating the O2O (Online to Offline) trend. Various services accessible anytime through networks are explosively increasing on platform businesses built on cloud technology. These technologies will dramatically reduce the physical distance and waiting time between patients and hospitals, as well as the time required to complete the entire process.

Although the global pandemic situation is exceptional, it presents the best opportunity for the expansion of telemedicine. The term telemedicine itself encompasses everything discussed so far. Data collected remotely by personalized medical Internet of Things (IoT) sensors are sent to doctors who review and prescribe treatment. The image of Koreans living worldwide receiving telemedicine from hospitals in Korea will no longer be just a fantasy. This is the power of medical platforms. Recent technological trends are all based on foreign technologies that have become global standards. However, the medical platform field is still open to us. As a senior IT professional, I sincerely hope that young venture entrepreneurs quietly working in Korea’s Silicon Valley will stand out in this field.

Dongchul Kim, Ph.D. in Engineering · Outside Director of Ubicare

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