By Bae Ji-sook
Staff Reporter
Doctors' listening to patients' explanations of symptoms and observing sick areas via interactive Internet programs will become available at prisons, remote and rural areas as well as other places where medical infrastructure is poor, the Ministry for Health and Welfare said Tuesday.
Patients can receive their prescription via the Internet and fetch their drugs from local chemists.
Plans for the so-called ubiquitous healthcare system or "U-health," were passed at a Cabinet Meeting Tuesday despite concern from doctors, who claim that the system will lessen accuracy and intimacy between doctors and patients.
The government is expecting all people to be guaranteed easy and wide access to medical assistance through the convergence system. "The interaction through the Web will guarantee people's equal rights to stay healthy and to be treated, no matter where they live and how they live. It will open doors to a new era," Park Ha-jeong, a ministry official, said in a meeting last year.
The system is also expected to boost information and technology businesses, which are seeking new growth. Seoul National University and telecommunications powerhouse, KT had agreed to collaborate on the promised U-health system earlier this year but the plans were derailed due to the country's Medical Services law that bans remote diagnosis and treatment.
"We also need to revise the article where patient's information could be seen only in hospital or clinics. In the era of ubiquitous healthcare, doctors can see their patients anytime anywhere," a researcher for the project said.
Doctors oppose the law revision claiming that the remoteness and the indirectness could easily lead to misdiagnosis, of which responsibility would fall on them.
The Korean Medical Association, the largest interest group for doctors, confirmed once again on Monday that they are against the adoption of the plan. "We admit that remote diagnosis is inevitable from place to place, from time to time. But the system will also dry out physicians because many patients may choose to be seen by famous professors rather than local physicians. We have requested the ministry to be prudent on the issue, but the authorities have turned a deaf ear to our pleas," the group said in a press release.
"We say any responsibility for inconveniences, ethical and moral issues deriving from the U-health system will be solely upon the administrators," declared the group.