| Sumario: | Purpose Significant investment in improving the health and wellbeing of aging populations continues, but health and care inequality is an ongoing challenge in Korea, as in other aging countries. Gerontech is often considered a potential solution, but the still-mixed evidence in real-world settings often hampers the widespread adoption of gerontech in the current health and care systems in Korea. This presentation will provide as case studies an overview of two recent government-funded R&D projects in Korea targeting socially disadvantaged older adults and aiming to build evidence on how ICT can improve the design and delivery of integrated health- and care-management services (Min et al., 2021) and public preventive healthcare (Kim et al., 2021). Method The session will begin with the unique health- and social-care challenges caused by rapid population aging in Korea. In particular, a lack of human resources, including social workers and nurses, compared to increasing care demands is one of the most pressing policy issues in community-based integrated care delivery. Min et al.'s (2021) study is presented as a case study that addresses this and other policy issues by developing and validating prediction models of linkages between care needs and resource allocation, which can assist care workers' case management work. This study is the first machine learning/artificial intelligence (ML/AI) modeling study using the nationwide integrated (health-social welfare) case-management big database (HangBok e-Um), which has over 340,000 old welfare beneficiary cases (2018-2020), combined with other databases in Korea. The session will also address collaborative, multi-disciplinary team efforts along with a study overview and lessons learned. Next, the second case study (Kim et al., 2021) presented is a health equity study conducted in a low-income small neighborhood in Seoul during COVID-19. The session will provide the policy and theoretical rationale for developing a community-based integrated health and wellness program and elaborate on how ICT was incorporated and implemented in order to maximize the effectiveness and efficiency of multidisciplinary care coordination and delivery to about 700 older residents in a lower-income urban district with limited financial and human resources. Results and Discussion This presentation will provide the audience with the broader research context, theoretical rationales, and research design underpinning other case studies in the Korean context.
|
|---|