Health and welfare statistics provide an important basis for policies aimed at improving people’s quality of life. As public interest in health and welfare increases, the provision of health and welfare statistics to users is becoming increasingly important.

The Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs(KIHASA) launched the Health and Welfare Statistics Information System in 2010 and since then developed information system infrastructures and applications as part of its effort to provide statistical services tailored to users’ needs. Since 2014, the Health and Welfare Statistics Information System has been restructured into what is now known as the Health and Welfare Statistics Portal, which, to set itself apart from Statistics Korea’s KOSIS, focuses its capacities on micro-data produced through KIHASA’s various surveys. The Portal also features links to relevant international organizations and research bodies.

The Portal was updated to a great extent in 2015, with its main page redesigned in a way to better meet users’ needs.

Also, the previous “Micro & Macro Data” was refurbished into “Data Bank” to better archive, manage and provide data. The Portal makes full use of infographics to help improve data visualization. Spatial information is implemented so that the user can create a map chart directly.

This year, we established a recommendation system and a deposit data section in the Data Bank. The recommendation system is useful to predict user preferences. We encourage researchers to consider sharing their own data through the deposit data section. As part of this project, we also looked into ways to data link methods and data link assessment.