The First Meeting of the Health and Medical Data Committee... Discussing Digital Health and MyData

The 1st Health Care Data Policy Deliberation Committee Meeting Held

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Young-won] The government held the first meeting of the committee responsible for deciding the main policy directions regarding health and medical data.

On the afternoon of the 27th, the Ministry of Health and Welfare announced that it would hold the 1st "Health and Medical Data Policy Deliberation Committee" meeting at the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Seoul. This meeting was the first since the formation of the first-term committee.

The Health and Medical Data Policy Deliberation Committee was established to discuss key decision-making matters related to medical information and health and medical data policy promotion. The Vice Minister of Welfare serves as the chairperson, and the committee consists of 20 members, including the Director of the Health Industry Policy Bureau responsible for bio and digital health policies, representatives from the medical community, research sectors, and patient organizations.

At the meeting chaired by Vice Minister Lee Gi-il, discussions were held on ▲ digital healthcare policy directions ▲ clinical data network (K-CURE) project promotion plans ▲ medical MyData policy promotion directions.

In his opening remarks, Vice Minister Lee said, "We will continue multifaceted efforts to spread digital healthcare services based on health and medical data and artificial intelligence to improve the quality of medical care for all citizens and promote public health." He added, "I ask experts to pool their wisdom to promote policies that enable the safe use of health and medical data, activate digital healthcare, and produce tangible results."

From a policy perspective, the government considered that major advanced countries overseas have already established laws and systems to promote digital healthcare and formulated national-level digital health innovation strategies. Digital healthcare was also included for the first time in the current administration's national agenda.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare stated that it plans to pursue three major policy directions to promote public health using digital technology: realizing future medical care based on digital platforms, creating new markets for digital healthcare, and innovating the biohealth industry based on big data. Additionally, it will strengthen the foundation to support an innovation ecosystem by closely establishing public-private cooperation systems and enacting new laws on digital healthcare and health and medical data.

The K-CURE project is aimed at creating a diverse and in-depth research foundation to overcome cancer, the leading cause of death among Koreans. The Ministry plans to integrate cancer data, which is dispersed across private medical institutions, the National Cancer Center, and the National Health Insurance Service, into a cloud-based system to provide it to researchers. Forty medical institutions, including data-centered hospitals, will open metadata through the K-CURE portal. Until 2025, the focus will be on cancer diseases with high industrial value, and from 2026, the project will expand to Korean-specific diseases such as cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases beyond cancer.

The meeting also discussed new management measures following the creation of a medical MyData platform ecosystem. Medical MyData refers to an ecosystem where citizens can check their own medical data via mobile applications (apps) and digitally transmit it for desired purposes. The committee plans to support citizens' daily health management through medical MyData, strengthen personalized medical care, digitize hospital administrative tasks, and drive practical changes such as creating new markets in digital healthcare.

Furthermore, the committee agreed on the need to establish a new management system for the safe use of medical data as its utilization scope expands. However, it emphasized that public and private sectors should wisely share roles during the ecosystem construction process to avoid hindering the private sector's creative development motivation.

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