Patient monitoring expands beyond bedside equipment to hospital data infrastructure

by Kim Jung -ah jungya@chosun.com

03.11.2026 13:54

A trend is emerging in which real-time patient monitoring, which has traditionally been centered on intensive care units, is spreading to general wards. With the convergence of advancements in wireless wearable technology and the introduction of health insurance reimbursement rates, there is a noticeable movement in which patient monitoring expands beyond simple equipment to become a data infrastructure for the entire hospital.

Until now, patient monitoring has primarily been conducted in intensive care units. This method involves checking vital signs, such as electrocardiograms and oxygen saturation, in real time using wired equipment. In contrast, in general wards, it was common practice for medical staff to round beds at regular intervals to check on patients' conditions.

With the number of nurses per 1,000 people in Korea standing at 4.6—half the OECD average—the limitations of the ward rounds system have been continuously pointed out. This workforce structure is leading to a demand for automated remote monitoring technology.

▲ A staged image of a hospital patient monitoring system. /Image = AI generated

One of the catalysts for this change is the introduction of health insurance reimbursement rates. Seers Technology's smart bedside monitoring system, 'ThynC,' became the first domestically produced digital medical device to obtain health insurance reimbursement rates for remote heart rate monitoring (EX871) in February 2025. This established a structure that enables hospitals to claim health insurance when providing patient monitoring services.

According to Seers Technology, ThynC was installed in approximately 12,000 beds during 2025. With an additional 3,000 beds added in January 2026 alone, the cumulative number of hospitals adopting the system exceeded 30.

Mediana recently launched a wireless ECG-based patient monitoring solution and is expanding its adoption in hospitals. According to a report by Leading Investment & Securities, the product secured contracts for approximately 1,000 beds within about 50 days of its launch, with a target of expanding to 15,000 beds annually. The report analyzed that the ability to integrate the wireless solution with wired patient monitoring devices already supplied to numerous hospitals, enabling implementation without separate construction work, could serve as a factor driving this widespread adoption.

As bed-level monitoring becomes established, there are attempts to shift the focus from 'how many beds to install' to 'how to integrate scattered data.'

Daewoong Pharmaceutical unveiled its integrated AI healthcare platform, 'All New ThynC,' at a digital healthcare press conference last February. The platform is structured to manage patient data collected from various devices on a single screen by linking Seers Technology's bedside monitoring system, ikoob's continuous glucose monitoring solution, Skylab's continuous blood pressure monitoring device, and Puzzle AI's voice-based medical record solution. This serves as an example demonstrating that patient monitoring is evolving beyond simple vital sign detection into an infrastructure that integrates medical data within hospitals.

Real-time patient monitoring, which was previously centered on intensive care units, has now entered a phase of expansion into general wards. With fee-based business models becoming established, the next challenge is whether this can be expanded beyond in-hospital monitoring into a continuous patient management system that extends to the post-discharge home care domain.