Asan Medical Center streamlines international patient service with AI

Asan Medical Center has launched an AI-powered integrated service platform for its international patients. 

HOW IT WORKS

According to a media release, the newly launched web-based platform of AMC International Healthcare Center allows patients to register, share their medical records, book a pre-consultation, and receive remote treatment.

“Any foreign patient can easily upload a description of their symptoms, photos or videos of the affected area, opinions from the medical team at their local hospital, and CT/MRI test data to the website,” AMC said. These data are automatically linked to AMIS, AMC’s hospital information system, for systematic data management.

Once the medical team at AMC International Healthcare Center reviews a patient’s case, they will arrange a pre-consultation with them to refer them to the appropriate department. 

Catering to patients worldwide, the platform uses AI to automatically translate at least eight major world languages, including English, Russian, Arabic, Vietnamese, and Mongolian. 

AI is also applied to enhance the platform’s data verification and management, including patient identification, image and video conversion, and test data arrangement, which were previously done manually. 

Moreover, patients can receive post-treatment remote health monitoring, counselling, and education via the website. They can check on their progress in near real-time there as well. 

WHY IT MATTERS

The AMC International Healthcare Center sees around 20,000 patients from overseas each year. In 2024 alone, approximately 19,482 international patients – mostly from the United States and the United Arab Emirates, visited the centre. 

Since 2021, AMC has offered telemedicine services to patients outside South Korea. It has delivered 866 remote treatments to patients with chronic diseases, including brain tumours, pancreatic cancer, and liver cirrhosis, from 57 countries in the past five years.

Over those years, patient data management proved challenging, compounded by a high risk of personal information exposure as pre-consultations were arranged via email or messaging platforms. The centre also has to deal with language barriers. 

AMC emphasised that with an integrated platform, international patients can now access the hospital’s services more conveniently.

THE LARGER TREND

Recently, AMC was validated for Stage 7 of the new iteration of the HIMSS Infrastructure Adoption Model – the first among hospitals in Asia-Pacific. It was commended for virtualising its IT servers, simplifying its IT infrastructure and saving $1.43 million in operational costs. It demonstrated the use of robotic process automation to streamline operations, saving over 10,587 hours of staff hours. 

Meanwhile, Kasih Ibu Hospital Denpasar in Bali, Indonesia, a private hospital that caters mainly to foreign tourists, recently had its EMR system validated for Stage 6 of the HIMSS Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model. “As a hospital group based in Bali, the tourism hub of Indonesia, our strategic location requires us to meet high standards set by international insurance providers, ensuring that our facilities are top-notch and compliant with global benchmarks,” the group’s president Krishna Duarsa said, explaining why they took the validation. 

In other related news, private hospital group Bangkok Dusit Medical Services in Thailand signed last year a memorandum of understanding to cooperate with Russian private healthcare provider Medsi Group in providing telemedicine to their patients.