Naver Cloud said on the 19th that its artificial intelligence (AI) check-in call service, "CLOVA CareCall," has proven the value of a "digital social safety net" that prevents hundreds of billions of won in annual social losses.
Team Naver completed a joint study with the Yonsei University ESG Business Ethics Research Center to measure the social value of "CLOVA CareCall," and published the "Naver CareCall Social Value Measurement" report containing the results. Following the "Digital Economy Report 2025" released in October, this study was pursued to identify the economic value and social contribution of Naver services.
"CLOVA CareCall" is a service in which AI periodically calls care recipients to ask about their daily well-being and check for signs of health abnormalities, and it is currently provided to about 50,000 seniors at more than 150 institutions in Korea. The company said "CLOVA CareCall" is characterized by continuing natural, context-appropriate communication with recipients—such as remembering prior conversations—based on Naver's Generative AI technology.
The research team conducted two multifaceted studies, including a survey of officials at "CLOVA CareCall" operating institutions who agreed to participate in the research and a comparison of regions that adopted the service with those that did not by using public data from cities, counties, and districts nationwide. First, based on the survey responses, the team estimated that the social value "CLOVA CareCall" contributed to all operating institutions over the past year was about 34 billion won.
Next, in a macro analysis using public data, the incidence of solitary deaths in regions that adopted "CLOVA CareCall" fell 44.2% compared with regions that did not, and the number of emergency room visits fell 9.2%. In contrast, the number of general hospital visits rose 1.5%, which is interpreted as AI identifying signs of health abnormalities during check-ins and prompting preemptive responses before conditions worsened into emergencies.
The research team expected that if "CLOVA CareCall" were introduced by all local governments nationwide and 20% of the senior population used it, the service's preventive medical effect would expand to about 417.2 billion won annually. This shows that "CLOVA CareCall" not only complements the traditional, labor-centered care system to improve administrative efficiency, but also shifts the structure of welfare administration from "post-response" to "prevention"-centered.
Professors Lee Ho-young and Bang Young-seok of the Yonsei University research team that conducted this study said, "It is meaningful in that we provided a foundation to quantitatively evaluate the social value of the service by measuring various benefits—such as expense reduction and risk mitigation for society as a whole—created by AI-based public services," adding, "It can also be used as objective evidence to support fiscal and policy decision-making in the process of reviewing future service expansion or policy institutionalization."
Kim Yu-won, CEO of Naver Cloud, said, "'CLOVA CareCall' is core AI infrastructure that protects vulnerable groups and raises the qualitative level of the public safety net," adding, "We will continue to provide advanced AI technology support so that 'CLOVA CareCall' can fulfill its social responsibility as a successful model of public-private cooperation."
The full report is available on Naver's website.