노인 돌봄서비스의 시장화와 디지털 플랫폼의 결합 양상 -방문요양 플랫폼을 중심으로-

초록

In the context of the government’s policy to strengthen private sector-led social services, we focus on the potential for the expansion of digital platforms to change the landscape of care services. This study captures the emergence of elderly home care platforms as a combination of the marketisation of elderly care services and digital platforms, and seeks to analyse the specific aspects of this combination and its implications for elderly care services and care workers.To this end, this study first systematically examines the expansion of digital platforms into care services and their characteristics in the context of the marketisation of elderly care services in Korea. Then, using data from the Korea Health Industry Promotion Agency and the Korean Startup Investment Database, we empirically analyse the industry trends of home care platforms, and conduct a qualitative study using in-depth interviews to analyse the specific linkage mechanisms and experiences of relevant actors. The results show that the Korean care services industry is growing rapidly, and with the support of the government, well-capitalised and technologically advanced platform companies are expanding in pursuit of profits by taking advantage of the complex nature of long-term care services for the elderly, network effects, and digital platform management methods. While it was found that the growth of home care platforms could lead to over-competition and instability of long-term care workers, it was analysed that the expansion of big data and AI utilisation would be limited due to the fact that the main actors involved are the elderly and the nature of the labour involved in long-term care services requires interpersonal skills.

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