Analysis of the Efficiency of the U-Healthcare Industry

U-healthcare is a convergence service combining traditional medical industry and Information Technology (IT). It provides a medical service and healthcare which one can access anytime and anywhere, safely and without limit. As the scale of Korea's U-healthcare market having reached 2 trillion Korean won in 2012, the prospects for this area are bright. At this point, this study has analyzed the efficiency of businesses related to Korea's U-healthcare using DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) and the Malmquist index. The results show business effectiveness was not as high as expected in efficiency analysis which analyzed 2012 cross-sectional data. However, in the results using the Malmquist index, using 5 years of data to analyze longitudinally, 61.3% of businesses related to U-health have increased their productivity. This study has significance in being the first one to measure the change of efficiency and productivity, domestic U-healthcare, and to be considered to contribute to raising the business efficiency of Korea's U-healthcare.