Bahk Eun-ji has been with The Korea Times since 2012, building a career across multiple desks. She began at the Business Desk, where she conducted in-depth interviews with key figures in Korea's corporate world. Later, she moved to the Politics & City Desk, focusing on education policy and social affairs. She later served as team leader of the digital content team, leading curation efforts on the newspaper’s homepage and reshaping print stories for social media audiences to enhance digital reach. Now back on the Politics Desk, she covers the National Assembly and the Ministry of National Defense, with a renewed focus on political developments.
Korea to share clinical data of COVID-19 patients
Medical staffers at Kyungpook Natonal University Hospital treat patient with COVID-19 infection, March 25. /Yonhap
By Bahk Eun-ji
By Bahk Eun-ji
The government has decided to share anonymous COVID-19 patient data with domestic and international researchers as the highly contagious virus pandemic is straining health systems worldwide, according to the president of the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service (HIRA).
Kim Seung-taek, president of Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service of Korea
“The novel coronavirus is threatening the livelihood and safety of global citizens, and social and economic activities have been hit hard in many countries. Yet there is little evidence of real-world clinical data available for physicians or policymakers,” said HIRA President Kim Seung-taek.
The agency plans to jointly host #OpenData4Covid19 project, a global research collaboration on COVID-19 with the Ministry of Health and Welfare.
As of April 1, nearly 861,000 people have been confirmed with COVID-19 from 200 countries, and the total death toll has reached 42,369 globally. The virus pandemic is expected to continue to spread further for the time being.
The special decision by HIRA and the health ministry has therefore been made to tackle this situation. The data sets are collected and processed promptly, thanks to the Korean National Health Insurance System, which covers the entire population.
The international cooperative research network is the first of its kind where real-time COVID-19 data will be collected and made publicly available to researchers worldwide.
“We hope that researchers from home and abroad join us and actively engage in producing effective measures to combat the virus,” Kim said.
The HIRA also said it wants domestic and foreign public institutions, governments, hospitals and health insurance corporations in other countries to join the open data initiative.
The object of COVID-19 International Research is to share the HIRA's patient data to help humanity as a whole overcome the disease and produce effective policy enforcement.
The Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service (HIRA) building in Wonju, Gangwon Province. / Courtesy of the HIRA
“Ahead of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, we hope that the technology for big data analysis will create new value in the health and medical sectors … and all humankind can enjoy the benefits,” Kim said.
Research method and data attribution
The data source for the research are national health insurance benefit claims submitted to HIRA Korea. The claims data are both real-world and administrative data that include clinical content. The data have accumulated history of all medical services used by the entire population in sequence, or patient unit panel data, based on fee-for-service payments. As the data collection was not intended for clinical use, information nonessential for benefit reimbursement ― uncovered services and tests results for covered services ― are not included.
Based on Korea's health and medical system, the actual clinical data which was collected through examination and management of the confirmed patients will be established as cohort statistical data. HIRA will keep the data set for analysis within its closed network, and share the data's schema only, which explains table structures and variable configurations.
For more information, visit https://covid19data.hira.or.kr