The government said it will greatly expand the use of medical data and move up the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI)-based diagnosis, prediction and monitoring in medical settings.
The Ministry of Health and Welfare said it held the Health and Medical Data Policy Deliberation Committee on the afternoon of the 10th at the Korea Press Center in Jung-gu, Seoul, chaired by Second Vice Minister Lee Hyeong-hun, and discussed plans to boost the use of medical data and improve the opening and use of public data.
The committee consists of 24 experts from each field, including the medical community, academia, industry, patients and consumers.
The ministry decided to expand public medical data infrastructure to support medical AI research and clinical use.
Starting next year, clinical data from three national university hospitals will be linked to the health and medical big data platform, which is currently operated around administrative data.
It will overhaul the system so that data accumulated in national research and development (R&D) projects can be used for follow-up research, and build "national integrated bio big data" for 770,000 people by 2028. This will be opened in stages starting in the second half of next year.
A ministry official said, "On the premise of protecting personal information, we also plan to establish a system that links data between institutions so it can be used for medical AI training and clinical research."
A metadata-based search system will also be built so researchers can easily check data held by medical institutions. Support for "medical data usage rights (vouchers)" for medical AI startups and small and mid-size companies will also be expanded. The scale of the program will grow from eight projects this year to 40 next year.
Standard operating procedures for Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) and Data Review Boards (DRBs) will be established, and a "shared DRB" system that multiple institutions can use jointly will be introduced to streamline the review process.
Support will be newly created for 20 "medical AI demonstration" projects so medical institutions can verify the performance and effectiveness of AI solutions in advance. After that, AI research and demonstration functions will be integrated into data-driven hospitals to strengthen the foundation for AI use in regional, essential and public health care.
At the committee meeting, major public institutions also shared the status of opening their data and future plans, including the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency, the National Cancer Center, the National Health Insurance Service and the Health Insurance Review & Assessment Service (HIRA).
The National Institute of Health under the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency operates the CODA (Center of Data & Research Resources) system, which integrates the management of health and medical research and development (R&D) data. Next year, it plans to advance GPU- and cloud-based remote analysis services.
The National Cancer Center, as the National Cancer Data Center, is opening cancer public data and clinical libraries for eight major cancer types, and will push to expand services that combine public and clinical data and build out Precision Medicine infrastructure.
The National Health Insurance Service is providing customized health services and supporting infectious disease and regional health care policies through its health insurance big data platform. It plans to expand its analysis centers and upgrade the analysis environment.
HIRA is providing treatment, pharmaceutical and medical resource data through the HIRA health and medical big data open system, and will strengthen the development of low-risk pseudonymized data and support for startups.
Second Vice Minister of Health and Welfare Lee Hyeong-hun said, "The government will prepare a legal and institutional foundation for the safe use of medical data and expand policy support and investment so the entire data life cycle—from AI research and development to demonstration and on-site application—works smoothly."