Award Recognizes Work to Protect Sensitive Health Data

The Korea Health Information Service (KHIS), a South Korean agency specializing in health information systems, has received a Prime Minister’s group commendation for its work to protect health data while building systems that allow the information to be used responsibly. The award was announced at a ceremony marking the sixth Personal Information Protection Day.

Government commendations for the occasion recognize individuals and organizations that have helped raise public awareness of privacy and improve data-protection practices. For KHIS, the recognition reflects work across multiple areas: the agency handles highly sensitive medical information while also supporting services that enable health records to be shared and used.

Health information can reveal intimate details about a person’s life and well-being. Protecting it is essential to maintaining public trust in digital health services.

A Public Agency with a Broad Health-Data Role

KHIS works on several parts of South Korea’s health-information infrastructure. Its responsibilities include standardizing health information, supporting the exchange of medical records, certifying electronic medical record systems, and helping build a national integrated biobank and large-scale health-data resource.

Standardization means organizing information according to shared rules, so that different systems can interpret it consistently. In practice, this can help ensure that a patient’s medication or test result is recorded in a format that another authorized system can understand. The goal is to make information more useful across healthcare settings without losing sight of the need to protect it.

Why health information needs special safeguards

Medical records may include diagnoses, prescriptions, test results, and other details that people would not want exposed publicly. A privacy failure could therefore cause harm beyond the loss of a password or contact list: it could reveal a person’s health condition or treatment history.

KHIS says it has continued to strengthen its privacy-management framework in recognition of these risks. A framework of this kind combines organizational rules, staff responsibilities, and technical safeguards, rather than relying on a single security measure.

Two Consecutive Years at the Highest Assessment Level

The Personal Information Protection Commission, South Korea’s privacy regulator, gave KHIS an S rating—the highest grade—in its personal information protection assessment in both 2024 and 2025. The two-year record is one measure of the agency’s work to improve its internal controls and privacy practices.

An assessment rating does not mean that every possible risk has disappeared. Instead, it provides an external evaluation of how an organization manages and protects personal information under the assessment criteria. As data systems change, organizations must continue reviewing their safeguards and adapting them to new risks.

For a health-data agency, that ongoing work can include limiting who can access information, clarifying how it may be used, and reviewing whether the systems handling it are properly managed. These controls are especially important when information moves between institutions or is processed through services operated by outside providers.

Supporting Medical Data Sharing with Privacy Controls

KHIS is also strengthening safeguards for medical MyData, a system that enables people to access and share their personal health information through designated services. The work is linked to the right to request data transfer, introduced through amendments to South Korea’s Personal Information Protection Act. In simple terms, the right is intended to let people ask for their personal information to be transferred through approved channels, rather than having it remain accessible only through the organization that originally holds it.

Through the Health Information Highway, KHIS provides an intermediary service for medical MyData. An intermediary service helps route information between participating systems; it does not remove the need to decide who is authorized to receive the data or how it may be used. KHIS says it has adopted technical and administrative safeguards, including an internal management plan for the intermediary system.

What secure sharing can mean in everyday life

A patient may need to provide health information to another authorized service or provider. A system designed for secure transfer can make that process more organized, while privacy controls help reduce the risk that records are accessed or handled improperly.

The balance is important: health information can support more convenient services and research, but wider availability also increases the importance of clear permissions, careful system design, and responsible handling at every stage.

Preparing for AI and Cloud-Based Health Services

KHIS has also taken part in efforts to establish rules for using health data safely in the age of artificial intelligence (AI, computer systems that perform tasks such as finding patterns or generating predictions). The agency supported revisions to guidance on health-data use and held information sessions to help medical institutions and researchers understand how data may be used while privacy is protected.

This work matters because AI research often depends on large collections of examples. For instance, researchers may study medical images or records to look for patterns that could help improve a tool. But the usefulness of such data does not cancel the need to protect the people represented in it. Guidance can help organizations understand their responsibilities before they collect, share, or analyze information.

New technologies bring new privacy questions

KHIS says it has been reviewing its security arrangements as technologies such as AI and cloud computing become more widespread. Cloud computing means using remote internet-connected servers to store or process information instead of relying only on a local computer or data center. Such services can offer flexibility, but organizations still need to understand where information is handled and how access is controlled.

The agency is also conducting research on a health-sector AI transformation strategy (the shift toward using AI across healthcare services and operations) and on data-security systems. These efforts are intended to help prepare for new uses of health data while keeping privacy protections in view.

Oversight Extends to Outside Contractors

Privacy protection does not end with an agency’s own employees. Organizations often hire external companies to perform tasks involving personal information, creating a need to monitor how those contractors handle the data they are entrusted with.

KHIS says it assigns management ratings to contractors according to the risks associated with their work. Depending on the rating, it provides additional training and conducts on-site inspections. The system is designed to strengthen supervision throughout the process of handling personal information, including work carried out on the agency’s behalf.

  • Contractor risk levels are assessed and used to guide oversight.
  • Additional training is provided where needed.
  • On-site checks are used to review how personal information is managed.

This approach reflects a basic principle of data protection: an organization remains responsible for taking reasonable care even when some work is performed by another company.

Building a Privacy-Conscious Workplace

KHIS says it also runs internal activities to make privacy protection part of everyday workplace practice. These include a Personal Information Protection Week, a privacy-slogan contest, and joint campaigns with related organizations.

Awareness activities cannot replace technical safeguards, but they can help employees recognize that small decisions matter—for example, whether a document is shared only with the people who need it or whether personal information is included unnecessarily. A strong privacy culture depends on both reliable systems and people who understand how to use them responsibly.

KHIS President Yeom Min-seop said health data is sensitive information directly connected to people’s well-being, so privacy protection must come before its safe use. He said the agency would use the commendation as an opportunity to strengthen its responsibilities and help create an environment in which people can use health-data services with confidence.

What the Recognition Signals—and What Comes Next

The commendation recognizes KHIS’s work across assessment performance, medical-data services, guidance for AI-related data use, contractor oversight, and internal privacy awareness. Its S ratings in 2024 and 2025 provide a further indication of strong performance under the government’s assessment system.

The broader challenge is to make health data useful without making it needlessly exposed. As more services connect medical records and more research explores AI, agencies and healthcare organizations will need to keep reviewing permissions, security measures, and accountability for outside providers. The award marks recognition of work already undertaken; sustaining public confidence will depend on maintaining those protections as technology and data use continue to change.