South Korea’s Ministry of Health and Welfare unveiled an AI Transformation Roadmap to enable round-the-clock care using AI across homes and care facilities.

Administrative tasks at care sites will be digitized, targeting automation of more than half of routine welfare work by 2028 to free civil servants for counseling and direct support.

Generative AI will begin welfare consultations in plain language next year, with one-click application links available by 2029, and AI models will help identify economically disadvantaged households and individuals at risk of isolation, abuse, or complex care needs.

The initiative includes establishing legal and ethical guidelines for safe AI use, boosting AI literacy for care workers and civil servants, developing specialized personnel, and building governance and support structures involving government, experts, businesses, and frontline workers.

A public-private collaboration framework will integrate welfare and care data across sectors, enabling individuals to access their own information via a new personal data system linked to medical data over time.

Care facilities will become smart facilities with smart diapers and fall sensors to detect abnormalities and shift workers toward direct care tasks.

A smart home pilot will include 400 households and 12 facilities in 2027, expanding in 2028 with a focus on public care services and extending to home-use autonomous companion robots after 2030.

The government aims to accelerate AI and IoT care-tech R&D through 2029 and physical AI care robots through 2030, feeding field data into a welfare equipment registry and linking to fee schedules and voucher programs for broad rollout.

Smart homes will continuously monitor safety, health, and emotional well-being, with AI detecting early warning signs from lifestyle and health data and reducing the need for manual monitoring.

Health and Welfare Minister emphasized that AI is an assistant to support care work amid worker shortages, not a replacement for human caregivers.