Legal Aspect of Health Information System in Korea

With improvement of internet and other information technology (IT), electronic medical record (EMP), telemedicine, and electronic commerce (EC) have been rapidly dissminated to healthcare industry. However, current legal as well as regulatory constrains limit to the further growth of these IT applications in healthcare. In this study, such legal and regulatory issues, risk factors, and constrains were reviewed first, and then recommendations to reduce these risk factors and constraints were made based on the review of the related foreign legislations. In addition, technical aspects of these applications were also reviewed to examine how technology affects them in healthcare. As a result, the following recommendations were made; allow legal authorization of EMP, prepare a law to protect individual privacy, legalize telemedicine, establish review committee for EC within professional societies, and establish standards for communication and electronic documents.ope