Medical staff at a community treatment center in Mungyeong, 180 kilometers southeast of Seoul, monitor COVID-19 patients quarantined at the facility on March 12, 2020. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, Dec. 13 (Korea Bizwire) — Amid the expansion of at-home medical treatments resulting from the surge in the number of COVID-19 patients, non-face-to-face medical services are also expanding steadily in medical communities.
The medical industry, which once threatened a strike to prevent the introduction of non-face-to-face medical services, appears to be taking a step back.
Some hospitals are on track to launch non-face-to-face medical services for some patients such as Korean nationals residing abroad or foreigners who have difficulty visiting hospitals due to the pandemic.
Gachon University Gil Medical Center is now testing a remote diagnosis platform for Korean nationals residing abroad, in collaboration with local medical startup JLK, and plans to fully introduce it early next year.
A patient who feels a pneumonia symptoms in a foreign country can send an X-ray image taken locally to the JLK platform. The platform’s artificial intelligence (AI) analyzes the image concerned and reports the result to the domestic medical specialist.
The medical specialist can diagnose the patient through a video call on the basis of the analysis result.
The Seoul National University Bundang Hospital is conducting a non-face-to-face diagnosis for foreign patients who have the experience of visiting the hospital using an online video conference program.
The Korean Medical Association, whose members are mostly doctors with their own medical clinics, also called for the need to expand the scope of non-face-to-face medical institutions for COVID-19 patients.
The association, however, noted, “We still believe that face-to-face medical services for patients should be the basic principle, adding that non-face-to-face medical services should be allowed as a temporary measure to deal with the surge in the number of COVID-19 patients.”
J. S. Shin (js_shin@koreabizwire.com)
