“Send My Medical Records Safely to the Hospital or Company I Choose”

South Korea’s Digital Healthcare Act is approaching enactment after years of delays, promising to let patients send their medical records securely to hospitals and health-management companies of their choice. The bill, first proposed in 2022, seeks to address a health-data system divided among medical institutions, the National Health Insurance Service, the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service, local governments and several separate laws.

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Digital healthcare is not simply the application of artificial intelligence or digital technology to medicine. It is a system that innovates prevention, diagnosis, treatment, health management and research and development based on health information.

Digital healthcare, as presented at the 2026 annual symposium of the Korea Health Information Service, means more than bringing artificial intelligence or other digital tools into hospitals. It is described as a system for using health information to improve prevention, diagnosis, treatment, health management and research. Its success, officials and experts said, depends on building infrastructure that allows fragmented data to connect safely and reliably.

One of the bill’s central measures is the patient’s right to request the transmission of medical information. Adults would be able to ask for their treatment, examination and prescription records to move securely to another medical institution or a health-management company. The measure would give patients more practical control over information about their own health. Government systems such as the Health Information Expressway and My Health Record would also gain a clearer legal foundation.

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The success of digital healthcare depends not only on the technology itself but also on how well we build reliable medical information infrastructure.

Supporters see the system as preparation for an aging society in which more people may live alone and older patients may change hospitals. Carrying paper records from one hospital to another would become increasingly impractical. But the transmission right would only be a first step. Questions remain over whether patient data belongs to the patient, the doctor who created it or the hospital that manages it, as well as how institutions should be compensated for the costs and expertise involved.

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Whether data inside a hospital belongs to the patient, the doctor who created it or the hospital that manages it remains under discussion.

Experts also called for cooperation among patients, civic groups, the medical sector, academia and industry. The government plans to operate a Digital Healthcare Policy Committee. Officials said they want health information to be used safely under public trust, rather than left unused in the name of protection or exploited in the name of innovation.

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I will create a virtuous cycle in which health information is neither information that cannot be used because it is protected nor information whose protection is abandoned for the sake of use.