The patent applications on U-Health Care, integration of ubiquitous information technology and medical technology, are increasing on average 17 percent for the past five years. (image: Adrian Clark/Flickr)
SEOUL, Korea, Feb 22 (Korea Bizwire) – As aging is accelerating and many Koreans are more interested in health, patent applications are rapidly increasing in the U-Health Care sector.
According to the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO), the patent applications on U-Health Care, integration of ubiquitous information technology and medical technology, are increasing on average 17 percent for the past five years and record more than 300 cases a year.
Mainly by Business Methods (BM) seeking for new health care business systems implemented by IT such as computers, the Internet and mobile telecommunications technology, the applicants aim for their patents in heath check, remote medical treatment and generic technology fields.
U-health care patents are mainly focused on health management systems like giving feedbacks to users through collected data such as body temperature, blood pressure and pulsation by servers or mobile devices. Through it, they can prevent future diseases through checking user information like their diet patterns, exercises and weights.
Through the U-health care technology, patients living overseas can be diagnosed by doctors in Korea through image communications technology or people in the remote villages can get doctors’ urgent treatment through collected data from the servers.
Also, if the pending law on remote medical treatment is passed the National Assembly, the patent applications on the U-Health Care will skyrocket as it allows more remote medical treatment solutions.
Among the patent applicants, most are applied by companies (1,882 cases) and followed by individuals (962), universities (424), research institutes (142), hospitals (60), and so on. By individual entity, Samsung Electronics is the top applicant for patents with 106 applications, followed by SK telecom (93), Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (81), Kyungbook National University (44) and KT (43).
Among the top-ten applicants, major telecom companies, colleges and hospitals are easily noticed as U-health need to basically use communications network and universities and university hospitals can graft the state-of-the-art medical techniques into it.
An official at KIPO said, “As the world’s IT industry leader, Korea is well equipped with network infrastructure and smart devices like smartphones, tablets and desktop computers are widely available, U-Health can be a next-generation growth industry by getting synergy effects from the environment.”
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