[Telemedicine at a Crossroads]③ US, China, and Europe Take the 'Same Path'... Only Korea on a 'Lonely Road'

The field of digital healthcare: telemedicine
[Image source=Yonhap News]

Non-face-to-face medical care refers to the act of providing medical consultation and prescriptions through IT devices such as smartphones. In South Korea, non-face-to-face medical care between healthcare providers and patients is prohibited under the Medical Service Act, but it was temporarily allowed during the COVID-19 pandemic under the Infectious Disease Control and Prevention Act. If non-face-to-face medical care is not legislated during the 21st National Assembly within the three-month pilot project starting next month, the 34 million temporary non-face-to-face medical care data will become useless. Currently, five bills allowing non-face-to-face medical care have been proposed, but since the target patients and scope vary, there is a growing call to unify opinions. As the government’s pilot project is likely to be used as a model case, there is also a perspective that regulations should be significantly relaxed to enhance South Korea’s status in digital healthcare.

While the United States, China, and Europe, all competing for dominance in digital healthcare, are competing on the same road, South Korea is effectively taking a solitary path. The United States legalized non-face-to-face medical care in 1990 and implemented it in 1993. The U.S. system allows insurance coverage through public insurance programs such as Medicare (for those aged 65 and older and people with disabilities) and Medicaid (for low-income individuals), or through private insurance. During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, public insurance greatly expanded the coverage for non-face-to-face medical care, but this expansion is only set to apply until next year.

China is one of the countries where non-face-to-face medical care has spread most rapidly. After introducing non-face-to-face medical care in 2014, online hospitals were even established by 2018. Among European countries, France legalized non-face-to-face medical care and applied health insurance coverage in 2018. From March 2020, due to COVID-19, all patients including first-time visitors were able to receive non-face-to-face medical care. The United Kingdom has supported non-face-to-face medical care through the National Health Service (NHS) since 2019. The NHS is an app that allows all citizens to access their medical records and automatically receive prescriptions for long-term medications.

The global digital healthcare industry is expected to grow more than threefold from $152 billion in 2020 to $508 billion in 2027, a scale equivalent to 35% of the global semiconductor market. The digital healthcare industries of the United States, Japan, China, and Europe account for more than 70% of the global market. South Korea accounts for less than 1%.

According to market research firm MarketsandMarkets, the global non-face-to-face medical care market is expected to more than double from $25.4 billion in 2019 to $55.6 billion in 2025. By region, North America is projected to grow from $15.4 billion to $30.6 billion, Europe from $5 billion to $11 billion, and Asia-Pacific, influenced by China, from $3.6 billion to $10.3 billion. In South Korea, there are no statistics due to the inherent illegality of non-face-to-face medical care. Regulatory barriers for non-face-to-face medical care, a field of digital healthcare, are higher than overseas. Legally, only remote consultations between doctors are still permitted. This is due to the medical community’s longstanding concerns about the difficulty of guaranteeing safety in non-face-to-face medical care. There is also opposition to non-face-to-face medical care based on concerns that it could accelerate patient concentration in large hospitals and clinics, potentially causing local clinics to fail.

A startup official said, "Overseas, investments from big tech companies continue, and the growth of non-face-to-face medical care companies through mergers and acquisitions (M&A) is steep," but added, "In South Korea, since non-face-to-face medical care has not been institutionalized, large domestic companies are turning their eyes to overseas investments."