Sinan County in South Jeolla Province announced on the 12th that it is launching an AI-based integrated medical and care service for elderly residents living on its islands. Twenty-five people aged 65 and over living in Jangsan-myeon were selected as the first recipients. They will be provided with the AI care robot "Hyodol."
Hyodol has a conversation function and provides daily management features that give reminders for meal and medication times. It is a device aimed at the hours in a home where someone lives alone with no one to exchange a word with all day. The conversation and activity data the robot accumulates goes through analysis, and when a warning sign is detected it is passed on to an administrator.
Medical care was attached separately. Sinan County linked the treatment portion of this project with the non-face-to-face medical platform "Soldoc." Prescribed medicine is delivered to the home by courier. The design takes into account the conditions of islands where reaching a hospital requires taking a boat.
The same week in Seoul, academics and researchers sat down together over the question of how far to trust this technology. On the 10th, the seminar "AI and Rehabilitation, Care, Independence" was held at Narae Hall of the National Rehabilitation Center. The event was jointly prepared by the Welfare AI Service Division of the Korea AI Service Society and the Rehabilitation Research Institute of the National Rehabilitation Center. Technology and policy tasks were discussed across four areas: rehabilitation medicine, emotional care, mobility support, and communication assistance.
The keynote presentation was given by Ho Seung-hee, director of the Rehabilitation Research Institute at the National Rehabilitation Center. Director Ho concurrently serves as head of the Welfare AI Service Division of the Korea AI Service Society. Kwon Hyo-soon, head of the Clinical Rehabilitation Research Division at the National Rehabilitation Center, introduced the concept of "Ambient AI" that permeates living spaces and presented the need for a rehabilitation and care system connecting hospitals and local communities.
Kwon also pointed out what must be in place before building that system. She presented a data governance framework and personal information protection measures as prerequisites. The information handled by care AI is someone's medication times, someone's voice, someone's movements through the day. Park Jae-hyun, professor of rehabilitation medicine at Hanyang University Hospital, presented ways to use three-dimensional motion capture and posture estimation, remote monitoring, digital therapeutics, and rehabilitation robots.
The list of presenters that day also included Kim Ji-hee, CEO of Hyodol Robot. CEO Kim presented cases of loneliness and social isolation among the elderly. The name of the same robot appeared both in an island village field project and at a national research institute's seminar.
In welfare-sector AI discussions, the phrase "people over technology" appeared repeatedly in titles and subtitles. The robot gives reminders about medication times and passes warning signs to an administrator. Receiving that signal, knocking on the door and checking on someone in the end remains the work of people. Who closes the distance between the alert and the visit determines whether projects like this succeed or fail.
The budget scale of the Sinan County project and whether it will be expanded to more recipients were not included in this announcement. Whether the initial scale of 25 people will widen beyond Jangsan-myeon can only be known by watching the operating results. How data protection measures will be put in place also remains a task for the field to answer.
In the households of elders living alone in Jangsan-myeon, one more voice telling them to eat their meals each morning has been added starting this month. Whether that voice will be used in a way that reduces visits from people or increases them depends on how it is designed. Who stands at the end of the signal the robot sends is the substance of this project.
