The three big questions about medical big data

2018-11-19

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Medical big data is the talk of the medical industry. In fact, medically advanced countries like the U.S and the U.K have already deployed healthcare systems tailored to each individual patient, using medical big data. The Korean government has also established a ‘Healthcare Big Data Initiative’ consisting of major public institutions and experts from various fields in efforts to leverage medical big data as the key resource in what we call the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The initiative seeks to make use of the existing medical big data, by suggesting ways to improve legal and institutional measures on the utilization of big data in the medical field and by devising service models that meet the needs of both public and private sectors.
 

With that in mind, we will discuss the concept of medical big data in the following series of articles to help us understand and explore how we can leverage the big data at hand. In this article, we start by asking the three most essential questions regarding big data.

 

 

1. What is medical big data?

 

The concept of big data first appeared in 2001 when an IT consulting firm META Group (now Gartner) defined big data as the 3Vs.


 

Big data is characterized by large data volume, high velocity in generation, delivery and analysis of data, and variety of data forms such as numbers, texts, and images. The same applies for medical big data. The only difference is that it deals with health-related data generated in medical environments and it also refers to the technology of deriving value from the collection, storage, and analysis of the data itself.

 

 

2. Medical big data, how big and how fast-growing is it?

 

 

The size of medical data has grown dramatically with the spread of medical imaging and information systems such EMR (Electronic Medical Record), PACS (Picture Archiving and Communication System), and mobile/wearable health devices.

 

According to IDC, an American IT research firm, the total size of existing medical data worldwide will increase from 153 Exabytes in 2013 up to 2,314 Exabytes by 2020. Here, 1 Exabyte is equivalent to 8 million 128-Gigabyte iPads. What’s more, with the advent of Internet of Things (IoT) which accelerates real-time collection of personal health information, the size of the medical big data is growing even faster and faster.

 

 

3. Medical big data, how diverse is it?

 

 

Data can be divided into 3 categories—structured, semi-structured, and unstructured—depending on how structured the data values are.

 

Structured data refers to any data with fixed values such as gender type (male/female) or age (numbers).

 

Semi-structured data refers to data with at least some kind of fixed patterns, though not completely fixed in its values. A typical example of semi-structured data is an ‘annotation’, the physician comment added to a medical image or document and which usually consists of a set of shapes or measurement units. Being either hand-written or digitally added, annotation data isn’t always fixed in its values but still certain patterns exist.

 

Unstructured data, on the other hand, refers to data completely without rules. For example, medical images fall under the category of unstructured data, and they don’t have any fixed or repeated patterns such as numbers, variables, and terms.

 

If the above-mentioned structured data is like a multiple-choice question, the unstructured data is closer to an essay question. There is only one correct answer for a multiple-choice question, but no fixed answer exists for an essay question which makes it much harder to grade as well. In other words, unstructured data requires a higher level of analytical techniques compared to structured or semi-structured data.

 

 

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It’s interesting to note that in April 2017, the Korean National Information Society Agency (NIA) declared, “the healthcare industry is one of the key potential areas for big data applications” (Big Data Monthly Vol.29, National Information Society Agency).

 

In the next article, we will continue the discussion on medical big data by highlighting why it’s important to first integrate the big data and the benefits that come with the integration.

 

 

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INFINITT Healthcare (“INFINITT” or “we”) strictly abides by all domestic and overseas privacy legislations including information network laws (for encouraging use of information network and protecting the information), privacy laws, HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), etc. This is an overview of how INFINITT collects, uses, discloses and disposes personally identifiable information of visitors (“users” or “you”) of our website. We ask you to agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions by checking “I have read and agreed to the privacy policy.” (in the Contact Us page or inquiry pop-ups). The information we collect upon your approval will be used for the management of INFINITT website. You are not to provide the personal information we request, but please note that if you choose not to, your access to services provided by INFINITT can be limited.

 

 

Collection of Personal Information

 

INFINITT collects the following information in order to provide the most appropriate and convenient services to our users.

The following information are collected from sales inquiries, product searches and exhibition scheduling, etc:

  • Contact Us
    Required(*): Full Name, Facility/Company, Country, Email Address, Phone Number
    Optional: Solution/Service of Interest, Comments
  • Case Study
    Required(*): Full Name, Facility/Company, Country, Email Address, Phone Number
    Optional: Solution/Service of Interest, Comments
  • Exhibition
    Required(*): Full Name, Facility/Company, Country, Email Address, Phone Number, Attending Exhibition, Date of Preference
    Optional: Solution/Service of Interest, Comments  

 

The following information are automatically collected from users and anonymized for any user-specific or device-specific data:

  • IP Address*, Cookies**, Records of Service Usage***, Records of Misuse, Device Information, ADID and IDFA information automatically collected from service usage.
    *IP(Internet Protocol) Address is online address information assigned to each PC or device using the internet.
    **Cookies are very small-sized text files saved in the user’s PC at the point of website access through a web browser. Next time the user accesses the website, the website server reads these cookie files and provides the same service settings as before. The user can choose to allow automatic cookie saves, to check each time a cookie is saved, or to reject cookie saves entirely. Please note that rejecting cookie saves could result in your inconvenience.
    ***Records of Service Usage are logs of: date of access, list of services used, and any normal/abnormal logs generated during usage.  

 

INFINITT uses Clicky* web analytics to log and analyze the traffic to our website. A unique ID tracking cookie is used for the legitimate purpose of identifying unique visitors. The following information are collected:

  • URL & title of pages viewed
  • URL & title of any links that are clicked on pages viewed
  • Referrer
  • Browser language
  • Screen resolution
  • x/y coordinates of mouse events
  • Unique ID tracking cookie (UID)
  • IP Address
  • Custom data**
  • *Clicky’s privacy policy here
  • **Custom data details here

 

 

Use of Personal Information

 

INFINITT uses the collected information to provide, maintain and improve our services, to develop new services, and to protect INFINITT and our users.

  • We may announce the release of new products, software updates and corporate news using the collected information.
  • We may develop, manage, provide and improve our products, services, contents and advertisements, and also prevent loss and fraud using the collected information.
  • We may identify individual users and/or appropriate services for users using the collected information.
  • We may notify important changes made to policy statements or terms and conditions using the collected information.
  • We may use the collected information for internal use such as audit, data analysis and research for the purpose of improving INFINITT products and services. All the information collected will only be used for purposes set out by this Privacy Policy. For purposes outside of this Policy, we will ask for your consent in advance.

All the information collected will only be used for purposes set out by this Privacy Policy. For purposes outside of this Policy, we will ask for your consent in advance.

 

 

Disclosure of Personal Information

 

For disclosure of personal information to third parties, INFINITT will ask for your consent in advance and notify you individually of the following: to whom the information is disclosed, their key businesses, specific items of information to be disclosed, and purpose of the disclosure.

 

For the following cases, we may disclose your personal information upon obtaining your consent through a legitimate process.

  • Partnership: we may share your personal information with strategic partners for the provision of better INFINITT services. In such cases, we will notify you individually in advance of the following information: name of the partner company, items of personal information to be disclosed, purpose of the disclosure, period of retention, and privacy protection procedures. We will never disclose any information without your consent, and we will also notify you of any changes to or termination of the partnership. Once the partnership is terminated, we will dispose of your personal information unless you agree to its retention. Even if you agree to its retention, you may withdraw your consent at anytime.
  • Subcontracting: we may subcontract the handling of your personal information for smoother business operations and provision of better services. In such cases, we will notify you in advance of the following information: name of the subcontractor, scope of personal information to be disclosed, and purpose, period and process of subcontracting.
  • Sales, M&A: in case the rights and obligations of INFINITT service provider is succeeded or transferred, we will notify you in advance and grant you the right to choose whether or not to withdraw your consent to INFINITT’s use of personal information.

 

For the following cases, we may disclose your personal information without your consent.

① When you already agreed to disclosure of your personal information.

② When you caused psychological and/or material damages to others in using INFINITT services, and there is strong enough evidence to mandate the disclosure of your personal information to enforce subsequent legal actions.

③ When we anonymize personal information for statistics, academic or market research purposes.

④ When by law, legal process and/or governmental authorities for investigative purposes.

 

 

Whom we disclose your information to

 

INFINITT may disclose your personal information to domestic and overseas branches, affiliates and partners for the provision of better INFINITT services.

 

To Whom

Purpose

Information to be disclosed

Period of Retention & Use

INFINITT Healthcare Co., Ltd.

Service

provision

Full Name, Facility/Company, Country, Email Address, Phone Number, Solution/Service of Interest, Attending Exhibition, Date of Preference, Comments

Until the cancellation of your membership or the termination of subcontract

MALGUM
CO., Ltd.

System development and operation

Full Name, Facility/Company, Country, Email Address, Phone Number, Solution/Service of Interest, Attending Exhibition, Date of Preference, Comments, IP Address, Cookies, Date of Consent, Date of Access, Period of Service Usage, Records of Service Usage, Records of Misuse, Statistics

 

 

The Rights of Users & Legal Representatives

 

Users and their legal representatives may request through email or in writing to access or modify personal information and to withdraw consent to the collection and use of personal information.

 

If you request to correct an error in your collected personal information, we will not use or disclose your information until the correction has been made. If we have already disclosed inaccurate personal information to third parties, we will notify them as soon as the correction has been made. In response to a request for disposal of information, we will handle your personal information as stipulated in the “Period of retention & use” and make sure that it is not accessed or used for any other purposes.

 

By rule, we do not collect personal information of children under the age of 14 for whom we need consent from their legal representatives. If personal information of children under the age of 14 has been collected, their legal representatives have the rights to access, modify, or withdraw the consent to the collection and use of their information.

 

 

Management of Personal Information

 

Period of retention & use

By rule, INFINITT will dispose of your personal information when you request for the disposal or once the purpose of collection and usage has been fulfilled. But when there is a need for retention due to internal policies and/or subordinate legislation, we will keep your information for the period specified in the legislation.

  • We will keep minimum information and usage history for the period set by law such as the commercial law, for cases where retention of personal information is.
  • We will keep your personal information for cases where we announced the retention period in advance and/or where we obtained your consent to retention.
  • For the following cases, we may keep your information for the specified period:

① Records on sales/product inquiries or searches, withdrawal from contracts/subcontracts, customer complaints or dispute handling: 5 years (Consumer Protection in E-commerce)

② Records on website visits: 3 months (Protection of Communications Secrets Act)

③ Records on customer complaints or dispute handlings: 3 years (Consumer Protection in E-commerce)

④ To prevent user activities based on impure motives and to secure evidential materials in case of disputes: 3 months temporary retention (from the day of consent withdrawal)

⑤ Evidential records for a violation of internal policies (i.e. Illegal usage history): 1 year

 

Disposal

By rule, INFINITT will dispose of your personal information once the purpose of collection and usage as well as the legal and business needs have been fulfilled. Paper documents containing personal information will be completely shredded. Electronic documents containing personal information will be destroyed to a point where it is impossible to technically restore the file.

 

 

Policy Changes

 

INFINITT may update its Privacy Policy from time to time. However, we do not reduce your rights stated in this Privacy Policy without your explicit consent. Any changes made to the Privacy Policy will be updated on this page.

 

 

Information Security Measures

 

INFINITT strives to provide services that you can trust and rely on. We promise to commit to the protection of your information.

  • ISO/IEC 27001:2013

Published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), ISO/IEC 27001 is the highest international standard for assessing information security management.

INFINITT received the certification for ISO/IEC 27001 in 2016 and has been qualified ever since.

  • HIPAA

HIPAA is an act enacted to strengthen privacy, security, and reliability of health information in the United States. INFINITT adheres to all of HIPAA requirements from the early stages of product design.

  • ISO 27701:2019

ISO 27701:2019 is an international management system standard for managing personal information.

In efforts to comply with GDPR and to effectively manage and protect personal information, INFINITT received the certification for ISO 27701:2019 in 2018 and has been qualified ever since.

 

 

Contact Us

 

If you have any questions or concerns regarding this Privacy Policy or INFINITT’s privacy practices, please contact us at:

 

Privacy Practice Manager

Sangwook Choi (CISO)

R&D

02-2194-1600

privacy@infinitt.com

Website Manager

Yujin Jeong

Marketing Communications

02-2194-6961

privacy@infinitt.com

 

For additional counselling on infringement of personal information, please contact the following organizations:

  • Personal Information Dispute Mediation Committee
    www.kopico.go.kr / 118 (without national code)
  • Personal Information Protection Commission
    www.pipc.go.kr / 118 (without national code)
  • Forensic Science Investigation Department, Supreme Prosecutors’ Office
    www.spo.go.kr / 02-3480-3571
  • Cyber Bureau, National Police Agency
    http://cyberbureau.police.go.kr / 182 (without national code)

 

 

Last updated on on April 3, 2019
*You can check the previous version of our privacy policyhere

I have read and agreed to the privacy policy.

닫기

Contact Us

We will get back to you as soon as possible.

INFINITT Healthcare (“INFINITT” or “we”) strictly abides by all domestic and overseas privacy legislations including information network laws (for encouraging use of information network and protecting the information), privacy laws, HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), etc. This is an overview of how INFINITT collects, uses, discloses and disposes personally identifiable information of visitors (“users” or “you”) of our website. We ask you to agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions by checking “I have read and agreed to the privacy policy.” (in the Contact Us page or inquiry pop-ups). The information we collect upon your approval will be used for the management of INFINITT website. You are not to provide the personal information we request, but please note that if you choose not to, your access to services provided by INFINITT can be limited.

 

 

Collection of Personal Information

 

INFINITT collects the following information in order to provide the most appropriate and convenient services to our users.

The following information are collected from sales inquiries, product searches and exhibition scheduling, etc:

  • Contact Us
    Required(*): Full Name, Facility/Company, Country, Email Address, Phone Number
    Optional: Solution/Service of Interest, Comments
  • Case Study
    Required(*): Full Name, Facility/Company, Country, Email Address, Phone Number
    Optional: Solution/Service of Interest, Comments
  • Exhibition
    Required(*): Full Name, Facility/Company, Country, Email Address, Phone Number, Attending Exhibition, Date of Preference
    Optional: Solution/Service of Interest, Comments  

 

The following information are automatically collected from users and anonymized for any user-specific or device-specific data:

  • IP Address*, Cookies**, Records of Service Usage***, Records of Misuse, Device Information, ADID and IDFA information automatically collected from service usage.
    *IP(Internet Protocol) Address is online address information assigned to each PC or device using the internet.
    **Cookies are very small-sized text files saved in the user’s PC at the point of website access through a web browser. Next time the user accesses the website, the website server reads these cookie files and provides the same service settings as before. The user can choose to allow automatic cookie saves, to check each time a cookie is saved, or to reject cookie saves entirely. Please note that rejecting cookie saves could result in your inconvenience.
    ***Records of Service Usage are logs of: date of access, list of services used, and any normal/abnormal logs generated during usage.  

 

INFINITT uses Clicky* web analytics to log and analyze the traffic to our website. A unique ID tracking cookie is used for the legitimate purpose of identifying unique visitors. The following information are collected:

  • URL & title of pages viewed
  • URL & title of any links that are clicked on pages viewed
  • Referrer
  • Browser language
  • Screen resolution
  • x/y coordinates of mouse events
  • Unique ID tracking cookie (UID)
  • IP Address
  • Custom data**
  • *Clicky’s privacy policy here
  • **Custom data details here

 

 

Use of Personal Information

 

INFINITT uses the collected information to provide, maintain and improve our services, to develop new services, and to protect INFINITT and our users.

  • We may announce the release of new products, software updates and corporate news using the collected information.
  • We may develop, manage, provide and improve our products, services, contents and advertisements, and also prevent loss and fraud using the collected information.
  • We may identify individual users and/or appropriate services for users using the collected information.
  • We may notify important changes made to policy statements or terms and conditions using the collected information.
  • We may use the collected information for internal use such as audit, data analysis and research for the purpose of improving INFINITT products and services. All the information collected will only be used for purposes set out by this Privacy Policy. For purposes outside of this Policy, we will ask for your consent in advance.

All the information collected will only be used for purposes set out by this Privacy Policy. For purposes outside of this Policy, we will ask for your consent in advance.

 

 

Disclosure of Personal Information

 

For disclosure of personal information to third parties, INFINITT will ask for your consent in advance and notify you individually of the following: to whom the information is disclosed, their key businesses, specific items of information to be disclosed, and purpose of the disclosure.

 

For the following cases, we may disclose your personal information upon obtaining your consent through a legitimate process.

  • Partnership: we may share your personal information with strategic partners for the provision of better INFINITT services. In such cases, we will notify you individually in advance of the following information: name of the partner company, items of personal information to be disclosed, purpose of the disclosure, period of retention, and privacy protection procedures. We will never disclose any information without your consent, and we will also notify you of any changes to or termination of the partnership. Once the partnership is terminated, we will dispose of your personal information unless you agree to its retention. Even if you agree to its retention, you may withdraw your consent at anytime.
  • Subcontracting: we may subcontract the handling of your personal information for smoother business operations and provision of better services. In such cases, we will notify you in advance of the following information: name of the subcontractor, scope of personal information to be disclosed, and purpose, period and process of subcontracting.
  • Sales, M&A: in case the rights and obligations of INFINITT service provider is succeeded or transferred, we will notify you in advance and grant you the right to choose whether or not to withdraw your consent to INFINITT’s use of personal information.

 

For the following cases, we may disclose your personal information without your consent.

① When you already agreed to disclosure of your personal information.

② When you caused psychological and/or material damages to others in using INFINITT services, and there is strong enough evidence to mandate the disclosure of your personal information to enforce subsequent legal actions.

③ When we anonymize personal information for statistics, academic or market research purposes.

④ When by law, legal process and/or governmental authorities for investigative purposes.

 

 

Whom we disclose your information to

 

INFINITT may disclose your personal information to domestic and overseas branches, affiliates and partners for the provision of better INFINITT services.

 

To Whom

Purpose

Information to be disclosed

Period of Retention & Use

INFINITT Healthcare Co., Ltd.

Service

provision

Full Name, Facility/Company, Country, Email Address, Phone Number, Solution/Service of Interest, Attending Exhibition, Date of Preference, Comments

Until the cancellation of your membership or the termination of subcontract

MALGUM
CO., Ltd.

System development and operation

Full Name, Facility/Company, Country, Email Address, Phone Number, Solution/Service of Interest, Attending Exhibition, Date of Preference, Comments, IP Address, Cookies, Date of Consent, Date of Access, Period of Service Usage, Records of Service Usage, Records of Misuse, Statistics

 

 

The Rights of Users & Legal Representatives

 

Users and their legal representatives may request through email or in writing to access or modify personal information and to withdraw consent to the collection and use of personal information.

 

If you request to correct an error in your collected personal information, we will not use or disclose your information until the correction has been made. If we have already disclosed inaccurate personal information to third parties, we will notify them as soon as the correction has been made. In response to a request for disposal of information, we will handle your personal information as stipulated in the “Period of retention & use” and make sure that it is not accessed or used for any other purposes.

 

By rule, we do not collect personal information of children under the age of 14 for whom we need consent from their legal representatives. If personal information of children under the age of 14 has been collected, their legal representatives have the rights to access, modify, or withdraw the consent to the collection and use of their information.

 

 

Management of Personal Information

 

Period of retention & use

By rule, INFINITT will dispose of your personal information when you request for the disposal or once the purpose of collection and usage has been fulfilled. But when there is a need for retention due to internal policies and/or subordinate legislation, we will keep your information for the period specified in the legislation.

  • We will keep minimum information and usage history for the period set by law such as the commercial law, for cases where retention of personal information is.
  • We will keep your personal information for cases where we announced the retention period in advance and/or where we obtained your consent to retention.
  • For the following cases, we may keep your information for the specified period:

① Records on sales/product inquiries or searches, withdrawal from contracts/subcontracts, customer complaints or dispute handling: 5 years (Consumer Protection in E-commerce)

② Records on website visits: 3 months (Protection of Communications Secrets Act)

③ Records on customer complaints or dispute handlings: 3 years (Consumer Protection in E-commerce)

④ To prevent user activities based on impure motives and to secure evidential materials in case of disputes: 3 months temporary retention (from the day of consent withdrawal)

⑤ Evidential records for a violation of internal policies (i.e. Illegal usage history): 1 year

 

Disposal

By rule, INFINITT will dispose of your personal information once the purpose of collection and usage as well as the legal and business needs have been fulfilled. Paper documents containing personal information will be completely shredded. Electronic documents containing personal information will be destroyed to a point where it is impossible to technically restore the file.

 

 

Policy Changes

 

INFINITT may update its Privacy Policy from time to time. However, we do not reduce your rights stated in this Privacy Policy without your explicit consent. Any changes made to the Privacy Policy will be updated on this page.

 

 

Information Security Measures

 

INFINITT strives to provide services that you can trust and rely on. We promise to commit to the protection of your information.

  • ISO/IEC 27001:2013

Published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), ISO/IEC 27001 is the highest international standard for assessing information security management.

INFINITT received the certification for ISO/IEC 27001 in 2016 and has been qualified ever since.

  • HIPAA

HIPAA is an act enacted to strengthen privacy, security, and reliability of health information in the United States. INFINITT adheres to all of HIPAA requirements from the early stages of product design.

  • ISO 27701:2019

ISO 27701:2019 is an international management system standard for managing personal information.

In efforts to comply with GDPR and to effectively manage and protect personal information, INFINITT received the certification for ISO 27701:2019 in 2018 and has been qualified ever since.

 

 

Contact Us

 

If you have any questions or concerns regarding this Privacy Policy or INFINITT’s privacy practices, please contact us at:

 

Privacy Practice Manager

Sangwook Choi (CISO)

R&D

02-2194-1600

privacy@infinitt.com

Website Manager

Yujin Jeong

Marketing Communications

02-2194-6961

privacy@infinitt.com

 

For additional counselling on infringement of personal information, please contact the following organizations:

  • Personal Information Dispute Mediation Committee
    www.kopico.go.kr / 118 (without national code)
  • Personal Information Protection Commission
    www.pipc.go.kr / 118 (without national code)
  • Forensic Science Investigation Department, Supreme Prosecutors’ Office
    www.spo.go.kr / 02-3480-3571
  • Cyber Bureau, National Police Agency
    http://cyberbureau.police.go.kr / 182 (without national code)

 

 

Last updated on on April 3, 2019
*You can check the previous version of our privacy policyhere

I have read and agreed to the privacy policy.

닫기