[In-Depth Review] Opening and Utilization of Public Health and Medical Data

On the 15th, the 4th Industrial Revolution Committee's Data Special Committee decided to open some real estate data managed by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport as part of the plan to provide unopened core public data. First, the Ministry of Land will support more rational decision-making by real estate market participants by additionally disclosing whether transactions were direct between parties and the location (city/county/district) of brokers, in addition to the currently disclosed actual transaction prices of real estate.

Furthermore, unlike other real estate, actual transaction prices for buildings such as factories and warehouses, which had not been disclosed, will be opened to alleviate information asymmetry issues. Following the previous opening of business registration numbers, the government's commitment to opening public data remains firm despite difficulties, and the process is progressing smoothly step by step.

The government and the Data Special Committee plan to continuously promote the opening of unopened core data that has been difficult to open due to public interest or personal information protection concerns, such as education, healthcare, national tax, and court ruling information. Among these, the opening of healthcare data is advancing somewhat faster.

Recently, ten private insurance companies applied to the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service (HIRA) for data provision, and some insurers have received approval from the Common Institutional Review Board (Common IRB), a prerequisite for data provision, for research plans utilizing health insurance medical information. In the future, when HIRA receives applications from insurers, it will convene the committee to review risks such as the appropriateness of pseudonymization and personal information leakage, and then provide the data.

In fact, in the recent insurance industry, discussions on developing innovative insurance services that can enhance consumer benefits by reflecting the high public demand for healthy life expectancy are in full swing. For service development, understanding public health demand and health assessment are core elements, and the use of healthcare data is essential for this.

Broadly speaking, healthcare data can be divided into data held by insurers themselves, electronic medical records (EMR) from private medical institutions, and public data held by the National Health Insurance Service and HIRA. Among these, public data is big data containing information on all citizens' treatments, procedures, prescriptions, screenings, as well as socioeconomic and demographic information, making it very useful for individual health risk assessment and understanding health demand.

However, there has been strong negative perception regarding insurers' use of public data due to concerns about excluding those with pre-existing conditions and personal information protection issues. Recently, joint efforts by the Ministry of Health and Welfare, National Health Insurance Service, HIRA, and the Financial Services Commission have made gradual progress. In the future, through the use of public data, it is expected that insurance products targeting chronic patients and those with pre-existing conditions will be developed, expanding insurance coverage for health risk groups and enhancing consumer choice through product diversification.

Meanwhile, the government is actively promoting policies to utilize healthcare data. Under the policy goal of supporting private-led achievements in healthcare data utilization, three major big data platforms are being established: the National Bio Big Data Platform, the Healthcare Big Data Platform, and the Medical Data-Centered Hospital Platform. Additionally, the My Health Way project, a healthcare MyData platform aimed at collecting dispersed personal medical records and health information in one place for use in treatment and health management, is also under development.

By utilizing healthcare data to introduce innovative services such as digital healthcare and health management services, it will contribute to promoting public health and reducing health insurance finances, ultimately creating public interest outcomes from the use of public data.

In other words, the opening and provision of healthcare public data to the private sector not only benefits private insurance companies but also creates public interest in promoting national health. In that sense, private insurance companies should not neglect their roles and responsibilities in pursuing the public interest of national health.

Seong-Yeop Lee, Professor, Graduate School of Technology Management, Korea University