About Us

The main trend of healthcare-wellness care service in recent years is to provide intelligent personalized medical services to users not in post management way after disease outbreak but in proactive management way without regarding time and place. Ubiquitous computing lab, in Dept. of computer science and engineering of Kyung Hee University, which has been focusing on the research in the area of healthcare over decades, was selected as an ITRC (Information Technology Research Center) on June, 2017. The title of the center is “Intelligent medical platform global bridge”, and is going to have inauguration on 19th September (Tuesday). It would be a great honor if you visit us and share and exchange excellent research ideas.

• Title of proposal - Intelligent Medical Platform Services over TEIN
• The relevance of Work Package (WP) – WP5.
• Requested Budget (EUR, €) – 225K EUR.
• Duration & period – 24 Months
• Regional diversity – Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan.
• Relationship with other existing projects – Mining Minds Wellness Platform project which was running from June 2014 to May 2018 by UCLab, Korea is one of the relevant projects.
• Keywords – TEIN, Intelligent Medical Platform, SaaS, Evolutionary Knowledge Machine, Knowledge Authoring Tool

1. Goal:

In the last decade, rapid digitization through advances in the field of Information and Communication Technologies and its applications has led to the Fourth Industrial Revolution. However, there is a large gap between technological advancements, between the developed and the developing countries. In order to resolve this digital divide, we propose to establish a collaborative platform, over TEIN, for technology and knowledge sharing in the domains of ICT and Healthcare. The “Intelligent Medical Services over TEIN”, is presented under the Work Package 5 of the Asi@Connect, call for proposal 2018. Through this platform, domain experts from South Korea, in collaboration with representatives from Malaysia, Thailand, Pakistan, and Vietnam will provide, training, education, tele-medicare, and customizable intelligent medical services, to enhance the technology adoption and healthcare service delivery in Least Developed Countries (LDCs[1]). Through this effort, LDCs will not only learn about state-of-the-art technologies, but also get hands-on experience with well-developed medical platforms, supported by TEIN, enabling a fair growth environment.

[1] Bangladesh, Laos, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Nepal, Myanmar, and Bhutan etc.

2. Alignment with WP Purpose: 

For the realization of this goal, TEIN already provides the necessary infrastructure, connecting the research and education networks, and supporting innovative service delivery, and cooperation beyond borders. Utilizing this research and education collaborative framework, Intelligent Medical Core (IMC), aims to establish a global platform for enabling the collaborative learning process. With, Asi@Connect providing the necessary eco-system, and a multi-national consortium of leading experts, IMC will act as a first step, towards improving the quality of healthcare delivery and introducing state-of-the-art Healthcare and ICT convergence.

3.  Motivation and Scope:

The main motivation behind IMC is to provide a conducive environment, for the developed and developing countries, to collaborate and prosper together, leading to the provision of low cost, high-quality, and state-of-the-art applications of ICT in general and smart healthcare services in particular. Through IMC, we aim to enhance our existing collaborations; transforming our regional success stories, to a global one. IMC will create a hub-like infrastructure, which will link South Korea, with cooperate countries (Malaysia, Thailand, Pakistan, and Vietnam). These will then act as mediators for extending IMC to LDCs.

4. Objectives:

The project aims to fulfill the following objectives:

• a. To establish and extend collaborations between the developed, developing, and least developed countries.
• b. To provide a platform for enabling joint contribution towards developing state-of-the-art educational contents in ICT and Healthcare.
• c. To build, enhance, and share expertise through mutual collaborations for growing together.
• d. To impart state-of-the-art ICT and Medical Knowledge via online and offline methods to students, medical experts, researchers, and developers.
• e. To create and utilize a mechanism of feedback from member countries for evolving the education and training contents.
• f. To provide Tele-Medicare services, for connecting medical experts from the developed countries to supplement healthcare service delivery in the developing world and extending the reach to LDCs.
• g. To provide, training, customization, and development support for IMC.

5. Methodology

In order to achieve these objectives, the project services are categorized into three distinct but related activities. These include:

• a. IMC for Training and Education
• b. MC as a Tele Medicare Platform over TEIN
• c. IMC as a Service over TEIN

IMC for Training and Education represents an amalgamation of activities, which will be utilized to develop human capital in the developing world. These activities will enable, cost-effective, high-quality, state-of-the-art, training and education in the field of Information and Communication Technologies, Healthcare, and their convergence. As a Tele-Medicare platform, IMC will enable, remote application of our well-developed collaborative silos, under the supervision of leading physicians from Korea. This will enable an improvement in the quality of the healthcare delivery eco-system, in the developing world. Finally, IMC as a Service will provide a customizable environment for its services, which will enable the local healthcare experts to enrich the healthcare services, before delivery. IMC as a medical training and education platform over TEIN utilizes 5 content delivery activities, each managed by an independent working group, and contributing towards achieving a harmonious process for knowledge sharing and utilization. The Working Group 1(WG1), is tasked with managing online educational curriculum design of ICT courses with medical specialization. While Working Group 2(WG2), manages the exchange of human resources for summer school, with the aim to build, enhance, and share expertise through mutual collaborations for knowledge sharing, leading to mutual enhancement of wisdom. Similarly, Working Group 3(WG3) manages the presentation of research activities, by conducting two workshops and four conferences, with the aim to organize collaborative research initiatives for promoting breakthrough ICT and medical research. Working Group 4(WG4), will manage the training programs to impart state-of-the-art ICT knowledge via online methods to the stakeholders, including MOOC based technical training complemented by e-books targeted towards ICT specialization. Finally, Working Group 5(WG5) will manage the evaluation process, to improve training and educational services.

As a Tele-Medicare platform over TEIN, IMC provides a multimodal interface for connecting users and medical experts beyond any physical borders. By integrating state-the-art technologies, cost-effective medical service delivery can be ensured for the collaborating partners. The platform will be evaluated through the medical diagnostics, medical treatment, and follow-up silos for chronic disease management. These silos, provide knowledge construction, sharing, medical adherence, and application in the medical domains of diabetes, kidney, and cardiovascular disease.

IMC as a service will provide mutual benefit to the TEIN collaborators, by providing the IMC Software as a Service (SaaS), IMC Data as a Service (DaaS), IMC Knowledge as a Service (KaaS), and as Off the Shelf Components.

6. Regional Diversity and Balance

This novelty of this approach can be viewed in the context of its scale and purpose. Here the former is a realization of large-scale, multi-national, deployment of well-developed and well-supported intelligent medical platforms. While the later enhances the utility of the same platform towards achieving Tele-Medicare and developing human capital. By using a hub-like infrastructure IMC on behalf of South Korea, will provide the necessary training and services to Malaysia, Pakistan, Thailand, and Vietnam. The experience gained through this process, and with an improved training and educational curriculum, IMC will then extend its services to LDCs. In this way, IMC would be able to scale out in terms of its scope and scale up in terms of its purpose.

7. Benefit for the TEIN Community

This approach would enable IMC to build and enhance the capacity of multiple NREN partners, with a wide variety of online and offline processes. Promoting the concept of universal inclusion, a gender-neutral environment with equal opportunities for participants from every walk of life will be provided. This approach would lead to better healthcare facilities at the far corners of the developing world.

8. Capacity of Proposers

With over 25 years of educational and research experience, Professor Sungyoung Lee is a distinguished researcher with over 600 technical articles (230 of which are published in archival journals) and over 20 projects, of varying scope. He has gathered numerous accolades over the years, including being awarded the Best Distinguished Scholar award in the year 2016. He is a founding director of the Ubiquitous Computing Laboratory, at Kyung Hee University Korea, with over 25 MS and Ph.D. students.

Some of his notable work includes, “Smart CDSS” (2006-2014); A smart clinical decision support system, which extends the traditional medical decision process, with intelligent knowledge authoring, management, extraction, evidence support and interoperability. Most recently the “Mining Minds Platform” (2014-2018), has been developed and deployed, to comprehensively mine human’s daily life data generated from heterogeneous resources for producing personalized health and wellness support. This project received over 91% successful evaluation result.

Similarly, the “REMIND Platform” (2017-2020), aims to create a global, inclusive network to facilitate the exchange of staff to progress developments in reminding technologies for persons with dementia, which can be deployed in smart environments. In this project, the focus is on human resource development, through exchange programs, research, development and training activities, in the domain of user centered design and behavioral science and its integration with ICT. Finally, the “Intelligent Medical Platform (IMP)” (2017-2022), is a novel project, aiming to fuse Artificial Intelligence, BigData, Cloud and Healthcare technologies, towards innovating the process of medical diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up.

He has successfully established a plethora of international collaborations, around the globe, including, include Chulalongorn University, Thailand, University of Malay, Malaysia, Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology, Vietnam, and NUST Pakistan. The importance of these collaborations can be exemplified, with successful development and deployment, in 2014, of the Smart CDSS at Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital (SKMCH), Lahore, Pakistan.

9. Potential for growth/further development

In the future, IMC will success stories will be used to, not only expand the collaborating medical institutes but also to other developing countries, in Asia and beyond. In addition to enhancing the current silos, new silos will be constructed, with increased of medical experts from the consortium countries. Application of our silo development methodology in the medical domains of, Cancer, Eye, Epilepsy, an Ear-Nose-Throat (ENT) diseases, will enable a more inclusive and conducive healthcare environment.

10. Regional Results/Outcomes/ Impacts based on the objectives of the Asi@Connect

In alignment with Asi@Connect, the IMC platform aims to deliver on a multitude of objectives, as described above. The Results/Benefits of these activities include, the following:

• a. In house and remote training sessions conducted in collaboration with upper middle-income countries (Malaysia and Thailand) and lower middle-income countries (Pakistan and Vietnam).
• b. Availability of high-quality educational content via MOOC and eBooks for experts in LDCs.
• c. 1030 individual trainings (under “train the trainer program”) via online and offline methods.
• d. Domestic Workshops and International Conferences, for improving the visibility of IMC and Asi@Connect
• e. 100Mbps TEIN link utilization for online training, education and service utilization.
• f. Promotion of all domestic and international events, through the use of offline and online mechanisms for ensuring wide reach.
• g. Tele-medicare and remote disease management in the domains of Cardiovascular, Diabetes, and Kidney
• h. Expert assisting tools, including Knowledge Authoring, Data Analytics, and Evidence support with knowledge repositories.
• i. Medical expert evaluation ~20 patients belonging to LDCs.
• j. Equal opportunities of participation, with fair gender (approx. 30% female attendance will be targeted) and regional representations.
• k. Knowledge transfer among TEIN collaborators for capacity building and sharing with under-developed countries on TEIN network

11. Visibility
Our promotional strategy involves four modes, targeting both online and offline users. Firstly, IMC over TEIN website will facilitate the dissemination and visualization of contents, for online users. Secondly, organization and participation in Workshops and International Conferences respectively, conjoint to larger ICT and Medical events, will enhance the offline visibility. Thirdly, IMC social media pages will be used for improving the online reachability, through popular social networks, such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Fourthly, press releases in local and international print media of the consortium countries would improve the offline reachability.