Catholic Medical Center, a hospital network in South Korea, has recently undergone digital health assessments to measure the baseline maturity of its hospitals. 

Widely adopted digital health assessment tools from HIMSS were applied, namely the Digital Health Indicator (DHI), Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model (EMRAM), and Infrastructure Adoption Model (INFRAM). 

The DHI measures an organisation's progress in building digital ecosystem capacity across four dimensions: governance and workforce, predictive analytics, interoperability, and person-enabled health. Meanwhile, the EMRAM and INFRAM measure its EMR and IT infrastructure maturity, respectively.

FINDINGS

CMC has eight affiliate hospitals: Seoul St Mary's, Yeouido St Mary's, Uijeongbu St Mary's, Bucheon St Mary's, Eunpyeong St Mary's, Incheon St Mary's, St Vincent and Daejeon St Mary's. They are all connected through a single hospital information system, the CMC nU.

Based on the DHI assessment, the hospitals showed varying baseline levels of digital maturity with Seoul St Mary's Hospital notably achieving a score of 310. As a group, CMC was found to have a solid foundation for digital transformation with strengths in governance and workforce, and interoperability. 

WHY IT MATTERS

Despite the varying speed and degree of their digital maturity, CMC hospitals all move in the same direction under the same digital strategy, said Prof In-Young Choi, VP for External Relations at Catholic Medical Center. Seoul St Mary's as the flagship hospital is leading the implementation of CMC's seven-year digital transformation. New technology and digital services are first tested and validated here before being replicated in other hospitals. 

Per the DHI assessment findings, CMC as a group is on track toward a digitally mature ecosystem with Seoul St Mary's serving as its benchmark for further improvements in its digital health capabilities, particularly in predictive analytics and person-enabled health. 

CMC credits its IT coordinators at Seoul St. Mary's with building a "high-quality" digital health ecosystem. Established in every clinical area, IT coordinators assist in ensuring smooth communications between users and developers through a professional and systematic communication system; raising the capabilities of the hospital workforce in delivering digital healthcare; and maintaining support and infrastructure. 

CMC will also focus on increasing EMR user adoption and strengthening its data centre to improve its EMR system and IT infrastructure. 

THE LARGER CONTEXT

CMC first revealed in 2019 its vision for its digital transformation. Its seven-year strategy outlined eight key digital initiatives and actions to achieve this goal. These include a 12-terabyte clinical data warehouse – which they claim is the largest structured medical data platform in South Korea, and a 1,610-TB electronic data processing system, which is said to be the first unstructured medical data platform in the country. Also in the pipeline is a big data-based digital pathology platform.

To further advance its digital transformation, CMC established the Catholic Information Convergence Institute in 2021. The institute is behind CMC's IT governance system, which guides the adoption and integration of new technologies throughout the group.

ON THE RECORD

Emphasising the importance of undergoing globally recognised assessments for digital maturity, Dr Dai-Jin Kim, CEO of Smart Hospital at Seoul St Mary's Hospital and CIO of CMC, said: "If hospital organisations intend to raise process efficiency, patient safety, and quality of healthcare service, they must undergo an objective assessment of the present state of their digital healthcare services and receive professional consulting and feedback on further digital improvement."

"Through such assessments, they can obtain advanced knowledge and stay updated on the latest digital advancements worldwide, which they may need to upgrade their respective HIS and shape their future-oriented institutional policies and strategies. These assessments can also help them avoid unnecessary trials and errors by gaining evidence and validated trends about digital investments."

Dr Dai-Jin Kim, CEO of Smart Hospital, Seoul St. Mary's Hospital and CIO, Catholic Medical Center

Following its digital maturity assessments, CMC also plans to focus on enabling patients to manage their health and wellbeing in the safety of their homes.

"We plan to focus more on developing services that enable patients to participate in their healthcare and treatment. A part of this is an aftercare platform we are developing that connects various state-of-the-art services to help patients manage their health outside of the hospital."

Professor In-Young Choi, VP for External Relations, Catholic Medical Center

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Learn more about hospital AI adoption from Prof In-Young Choi at the upcoming HIMSS24 APAC Health Conference in Seoul, South Korea on 1-4 October. She will be speaking at the plenary discussion "AI Horizons: Exploring the Future of Innovations." Secure your slots here.