SEOUL, Nov. 26 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s birth figures ticked upward again in September, marking the fifteenth straight month of increase—a rare run of positive news for a country long synonymous with demographic freefall. According to government data released Wednesday, 22,369 babies were born in September, an 8.6-percent rise from a year earlier and the [...]
SEOUL, Nov. 26 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea plans to create a national medical data-sharing platform modeled after the Mayo Clinic system in the United States, aiming to overcome long-standing privacy barriers that have slowed the use of artificial intelligence in health care. The Ministry of Science and ICT said Wednesday that it will launch a [...]
SEOUL, Nov. 25 (Korea Bizwire) — A majority of South Koreans continue to believe that antibiotics help cure the common cold, even though decades of scientific research show they offer virtually no benefit and can increase harmful side effects, according to a new government survey released this month. The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) [...]
SEOUL, Nov. 25 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea is preparing to sharply loosen restrictions on who may enroll in clinical trials for new cancer drugs, a shift that could give patients earlier access to promising therapies and reshape long-standing practices in oncology care. For years, many cancer patients and their families have confronted a painful paradox: [...]
SEOUL, Nov. 24 (Korea Bizwire) — South Koreans can now access detailed, government-verified statistics about specific diseases directly through Naver, the country’s dominant search engine, under a new public service launched Sunday. The National Health Insurance Service (NHIS) said it partnered with Naver to make health-care utilization data easily available to the public. When users search [...]
SEOUL, Nov. 18 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s medical community is escalating its confrontation with the Lee Jae-myung administration and the National Assembly over a set of health-care policy proposals that physicians argue threaten patient safety and undermine established medical standards. At the center of the dispute are three initiatives: mandatory ingredient-based prescriptions, stricter oversight of [...]
SEOUL, Nov. 18 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service (HIRA) on Monday launched a new centralized platform designed to bring unprecedented transparency to financial interactions between pharmaceutical and medical device companies and healthcare professionals. The “Expense Report Management System,” formally opening Nov. 17, is the country’s first unified public database allowing [...]
SEOUL, Nov. 14 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) on Friday unveiled a new six-point set of diabetes prevention guidelines, urging the public to adopt healthier daily habits as the country observes World Diabetes Day. Diabetes — caused by insufficient insulin production or impaired insulin function — remains one of the [...]
SEOUL, Nov. 14 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea will begin publicly disclosing detailed lists of harmful substances contained in tobacco products starting next year, as part of its expanded efforts to strengthen public health protections. The Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety said Thursday that the decision was approved [...]
SEOUL, Nov. 13 (Korea Bizwire) — A new survey has found that South Korean doctors work more than 2,300 hours a year on average, prompting calls from the medical community for more accurate assessments of working conditions before the government determines future medical school quotas. At a conference hosted Wednesday by the Korean Medical Association’s Research [...]