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South Korea's Minister of Health and Welfare Jeong Eun Kyeong recently visited Seoul National University Bundang Hospital, and held a policy meeting on expanding artificial intelligence (AI) in public healthcare with the heads of major regional medical institutions, including Seoul National University Hospital, Seoul National University Bundang Hospital, Kyungpook National University Hospital, and Jeonbuk National University Hospital.
The meeting aimed to explore policy support measures for delivering patient-centered healthcare services through AI transformation and for building a technological foundation for a regionally self-sufficient healthcare system that narrows disparities in access to care between the Seoul metropolitan area and other regions.
At the meeting, the heads of the national university hospitals shared their progress in implementing medical AI, leveraging the core digital infrastructure each hospital has built.
Participants agreed on the need for data standardisation and governance across hospitals and, in particular, requested government support for computing resources such as GPUs to help drive innovation in the field.
In addition, the Minister launched the Basic Healthcare AI Task Force, headed by the Vice Minister, in February and is currently preparing the Basic Healthcare AI Strategy (draft) for release in the first half of this year.
A core element of the strategy is to build a “public healthcare AI highway” that leverages AI to significantly strengthen the coordination of medical care across primary, secondary, and tertiary healthcare institutions, enabling people to receive the level of healthcare services they need anywhere in the country.
