South Korea to curb repeat CT, MRI scans with QR sharing and AI history checks

Patients who have had to undergo repeat CT or MRI scans every time they switch hospitals are set to see that burden significantly reduced.

The government plans to build a system that lets patients send their existing medical images directly to any hospital of their choosing via a smartphone QR code, while medical staff can use AI to check a patient's past imaging history in real time.

According to the Ministry of Health and Welfare's second-half work plan for 2026, released Friday, the government will establish a medical imaging information sharing system as part of a broader push for ICT-driven healthcare innovation. The initiative aims to reduce the practice of re-scanning the same body part each time a patient changes hospitals, cutting the time and cost burden on patients while plugging fiscal leaks in the national health insurance system.

The government plans to complete the tentatively named "medical imaging information sharing system" by the first half of 2027. Once in place, patients will be able to use a smartphone QR code to send their CT or MRI images to any medical institution at any time of their choosing.

Starting in December, medical institutions will first gain access to an AI-powered service that lets them look up a patient's existing CT and MRI imaging history in real time. The ability to instantly confirm whether scans already exist is expected to help medical staff reduce unnecessary duplicate examinations.

The measures follow persistent complaints about costly imaging tests being repeated for patients who switch hospitals. According to the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service, 944,172 patients received a CT scan for a given condition in 2025 and then visited a different medical institution within 30 days. Of those, 253,438 — or 26.8 percent — underwent another CT scan at the new hospital, meaning more than one in four patients who changed hospitals repeated the same test within a month.

The CT repeat-scan rate has risen every year, from 25.8 percent in 2022 to 26.2 percent in 2023, 26.5 percent in 2024 and 26.8 percent last year. The situation was similar for MRI scans: of the 224,894 patients who switched hospitals last year, 30,944 — or 13.8 percent — had another MRI within 30 days.

The cumulative cost of these repeat scans reached 65.05 billion won ($45.1 million) in national health insurance reimbursements last year — 49.15 billion won for CT and 15.9 billion won for MRI. Critics say a significant portion of that spending may be unnecessary, except in cases where repeat imaging is medically required.

The medical community has long raised concerns that some institutions request re-scans without making adequate use of existing images. In fact, some clinics and general hospitals have been found to re-administer CT or MRI scans to nearly half or more of all patients transferred from other facilities.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare expects that once the imaging information sharing system takes hold, smoother information exchange between medical institutions will substantially reduce both the testing burden on patients and wasteful national health insurance spending.