South Korea Advances Medical Data Exchange and AI-Driven Healthcare Research

South Korea’s Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW) is making significant strides in improving medical data exchange as part of its broader mission to enhance the use of health data across hospitals. These efforts include the ongoing development of the Korea Core Data for Interoperability and Transmission standards, alongside the implementation of the digital health record platform MyHealthway, now in its second phase. In addition to these initiatives, South Korea is set to launch a national project this year aimed at integrating the biological data of nearly 800,000 individuals. This ambitious project seeks to enhance health research and innovation by providing a vast pool of biological and medical data for analysis. The MOHW, in collaboration with the Korea Health Information Service, is also working on data-sharing agreements with major hospitals to promote the use of medical data for research purposes. This project aims to foster better utilization of medical information to drive forward medical innovations and improve patient outcomes. In a further push for innovation, an MOHW-led committee recently unveiled a four-year roadmap for establishing a robust medical AI research and development ecosystem. The roadmap emphasizes the need to invest in AI for essential medical care, including emergency services, major diseases, cancer treatment, and the development of AI-powered digital therapeutics, surgical robots, and AI-driven drug discovery. A key component of this roadmap is the creation of a unified healthcare data platform to support ongoing medical AI research. The platform is expected to streamline collaboration among researchers, hospitals, and tech developers, positioning South Korea as a leader in medical AI and healthcare innovation. Source: healthcareitnews