(Seoul = Yonhap News) Reporter Kim Young-shin = The government has decided to introduce and gradually expand a care model that monitors the health, emotional, and safety status of users 24 hours a day using artificial intelligence (AI), starting with public home care services.
The Ministry of Health and Welfare announced that Minister Jeong Eun-kyung reported the 'Comprehensive Plan for Welfare and Care AI Transformation (Roadmap)' containing these contents at the Cabinet meeting on the 6th.
As the demand for care increases due to rapid aging, a shortage of care workers is expected to take care of it. The Korea Development Institute (KDI) predicted that there will be a shortage of 990,000 nursing care workers compared to demand in 2043.
The government believes that the lack of care workers not only creates a gap in public care, but also has a negative impact on national competitiveness and can lead to social problems, and decided to build a sustainable welfare and care system using AI technology to solve this problem.
First, we create a ‘smart home’ that combines in-home care with AI devices and equipment. AI monitors the user's condition 24 hours a day and provides AI-based services for health, emotional, safety, etc.
Currently, AI only identifies crisis situations with individual information such as no movement detected or emergency calls, but in the future, various information such as lifestyle patterns, health conditions, and conversations with AI will be comprehensively analyzed to detect unusual signs early.
The government plans to develop an AI-based care model to be applied to existing public home care services, verify its performance through small-scale pilot projects, and then expand it step by step.
The target group will be from the elderly to the disabled, and the service scope will be expanded from the home to the local community, such as welfare centers and day care centers.
In the long term, we are planning to enhance services by applying home AI self-following robots that provide companionship, safety detection, and health care integrated into one mobile robot.
Care facilities have decided to transform into smart facilities where simple and repetitive tasks are supported by AI, and tasks that require a heavy physical burden are supported by care robots.
Currently, workers at care facilities must make rounds every two hours at night to check the safety, sleep, and bowel movements of users. There is also the inconvenience of having to wait for care recipients to visit workers.
In the future, smart diapers and fall and movement detection sensors will be used to observe the condition of the person being cared for in one place and respond immediately if anything goes wrong.
The goal is to reduce the workload of workers and improve the quality of care experienced by users.
The government plans to not only introduce AI, Internet of Things (IoT), and robots individually, but also develop a smart facility model that comprehensively improves the facility's work methods and operating system.
After the pilot project, the smart facility model will be applied from national and public long-term care facilities in areas with declining populations, and then gradually expanded to private facilities.
We decided to diversify application models depending on the type of facility, such as residential facilities for the disabled, and expand the scope of work that can be supported by developing physical AI-based care robots in the long term.
In addition, a support system covering the entire cycle will be established, from research and development (R&D) to verification and commercialization of new technologies needed in care settings, and field diffusion.
The Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Ministry of Science and ICT will jointly develop AI and IoT-based care technologies starting next year, and expand the scope of R&D to the fields of physical AI and robot technology from 2028.
Promising technologies will be commercialized at an early stage through cross-ministerial support, and technologies that have been confirmed to be effective in the field will be spread through institutional support, such as expanding long-term care insurance and welfare equipment items.
Welfare administration is also pursuing innovation based on AI.
Starting next year, we plan to introduce counseling where generative AI will recommend customized welfare services if you explain your situation verbally.
From 2029, we decided to improve the process so that people can apply for welfare services immediately after AI consultation.
We plan to continuously improve the AI model used to discover households in crisis to advance the discovery system, and develop a method in which AI proactively detects changes in living environments and connects them with support.
Among the tasks performed by welfare officials and care workers, more than 50% of simple and repetitive tasks such as document reception and verification and system entry will be automated with AI, and daily administrative tasks such as product management will also be gradually digitized.
We plan to upgrade AI to support work and decision-making, such as determining salary adequacy, detecting illegal payments, and establishing counseling plans for care workers.
We will create a platform that connects welfare and care data distributed in the public and private sectors, and also introduce 'Welfare and Care My Data', which allows users to view and utilize their information in one place.
In the mid- to long-term, welfare and care my data and medical my data will be linked to utilize the information for personalized services such as integrated community care.
The legal and institutional base will also be reorganized.
It was decided to establish a legal basis for AI use, data connection, and protection of user rights, as well as AI ethics guidelines.
In addition, we will establish governance by cultivating human resources to lead the digital and AI transition, expanding practical training for welfare officials and care workers, and establishing a welfare and care AI policy consultative body in which the government, experts, companies, and sites participate, and converting it to a committee.
Minister Jeong Eun-kyung said, "In a situation where a shortage of care workers is expected, the new role of technology such as AI is becoming more important. However, AI does not replace people, but is an assistant that shares simple and repetitive tasks. We will use AI to increase the sustainability of care and increase the value of care labor."
