Korea University Medical Center has recently revealed several major projects integrating AI into its treatment systems, enhancing privacy and its use of medical data, and transitioning to precision medicine.
The five-campus hospital organisation shared it has been working to incorporate cloud and AI technologies in the emergency department. In particular, it is creating an AI-based system for tracking, monitoring, and managing bed occupancy and medical resource utilisation, including major equipment, in near-real time.
It is currently researching to build a system for predicting ED medical resource utilisation for efficient distribution, especially during disasters and infectious disease outbreaks.
Additionally, AI is being integrated into its cybersecurity and cross-institution data sharing systems; it is also being utilised to enhance medical data encryption.
Meanwhile, it announced several new AI projects. It plans to build a cloud-based data lake with Amazon Web Services to efficiently store and analyse big data, supporting precision medicine research. In preparation for this, it will apply information life cycle management to its PACS this year.
It also committed to transitioning to an AI-powered precision medicine platform that analyses patient genes, lifestyle habits, and medical history data to optimise treatments.
Moreover, the organisation eyes developing AI-based chatbots and telehealth platforms; it also seeks to integrate large language models and retrieval augmented generation frameworks. Earlier this year, KU Anam CIO and professor Sang-Heon Lee shared with Healthcare IT News that they have been vectorising data of around six million patients as part of preparations to pilot LLMs this year.
"We will continue to upgrade our infrastructure so that new technologies can be flexibly incorporated and the system can be operated stably. Ultimately, we will pursue the development of a system to realise total care in all directions," said Park Hong-Seok, professor and head of KUMC's Medical Intelligence Information Center.
THE LARGER CONTEXT
KUMC has been exploring opportunities to collaborate with major health IT companies to protect and use data for research and advance digital pathology and medical image AI analysis.
Last month February, the organisation announced its partnership with Royal Philips for a five-year joint research and development of AI-powered solutions assisting neurological and cardiovascular disease diagnosis.
Over the past years, KUMC campuses have collaborated to enable interoperable data exchange via their cloud-based hospital information system. First developed for Korea University Anam Hospital, the HIS also facilitates the ongoing development of various AI models within the group.
"We will strengthen international cooperation to lead the standardisation of medical data and continue innovation to leap forward as a super-gap future hospital," commented Dr Yoon Eul-Sik, KUMC VP of Medical Affairs.