Medical Big Data
In Korea, patients will be able to easily get information about hospitals and estimated medical expenses related to their diseases by utilizing Big Data. Hospitals and medical nursing homes are also expected to easily obtain medical information to more effectively run their facilities.
The Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning and the National Information Society Agency released the results of Medical Information Consulting on January 21, which suggests services that will help promote public health and streamline the management of medical facilities. The initiative is possible by connecting medical data and statistics of the Health Insurance Review & Assessment Service (HIRA).
First, the service to provide information about medical treatments allows people to find the exact name of their illnesses through a natural language search of medical dictionaries. It also provides information about the estimated duration and costs of medical treatments for certain diseases, based on HIRA’s 7.581 billion cases (33 TB) of evaluation information and 11.6 billion cases of prescription information (6.5 TB).
Next, the service to support the effective management of medical facilities provides information about the supply and demand of medical service in specific regions to medical centers and medical nursing homes, based on 22,000 cases of information on medical institutions (4 TB), local populations, and their incomes.
Finally, the service to support the medical industry provides information about the nationwide distribution of medicines, prescription tendencies, and medical equipment distribution, based on information from about 700,000 cases of pharmaceutical production (6.4 TB), 1.2 billion cases of pharmaceutical supply (6 TB), and medical devices.