Health officials to introduce SK Telecom's AI service for effective vaccination

SEOUL -- South Korean health officials will introduce an artificial intelligence-based service for quick and effective COVID-19 vaccination. The service based on SK Telecom's AI service NUGU will begin providing vaccination-related information to digitally marginalized groups including the elderly from the third quarter of this year.

SK Telecom (SKT) said it has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) for the development and operation of Nugu Vaccine Care Call, a service designed to alleviate the workload of personnel at vaccination centers and related medical institutions.

"We will be able to provide our senior citizens with important vaccination-related information and support," KDCA head Jeong Eun-kyeong said in a statement on April 8.

AI will make phone calls to notify a person of the inoculation schedule and monitor side effects. The monitoring results will be uploaded to a related website for assessment by medical center personnel. The service will provide information about the immune response to vaccination as well as appropriate measures in case of abnormalities.

SKT's Nugu Care Call, an AI-powered automated check-in call service introduced in May 2020 for people under self-quarantine and active surveillance, has reduced the workload of healthcare workers by 85 percent. SKT has accumulated systematic and rapid monitoring data to reduce work at quarantine sites as AI takes over the work previously done by health center personnel.