Min-Gyu Kang, MD PhD · Allergy, Chungbuk National University
An allergy specialist sorts out the drugs you must avoid and the drugs you can take, and puts them on your phone and a QR card. Show it at any clinic or pharmacy.
Digital Drug Safety Card
Fictional demo dataJ01CA04J01CR02Scan this QR at a clinic or pharmacy to open the full record the specialist prepared.
A redrawn example of the card built in the 2022-2024 MFDS project. About the card project
A reaction history lives only on a paper card and in the patient's memory, so it is lost when the clinic or pharmacy changes.
Korea's Drug Utilization Review checks every prescription, but it holds no individual allergy history.
Each person has different drugs to avoid, yet prescriptions and counseling go out in the same words to all.
A patient who had anaphylaxis to cefaclor is prescribed a cephalosporin antibiotic again at another hospital. The old card said what had happened. It did not say what to avoid from now on.
Narrated and subtitled: a patient checks a medicine, shows the record at a clinic and pharmacy, and takes it with confidence.
Search a drug name or scan the QR code printed on the prescription, and the app shows how it compares with the record your specialist entered. It is designed to look at patches and eye drops from the same drug class too.
At a new hospital or pharmacy, one QR card shows the record a specialist prepared. That holds in an emergency room too, when talking is hard.
Medicines from several hospitals come together in plain words: why you take each one, which combinations are a problem, and which symptoms to raise with your doctor.
It started with one app in 2017 and grew into a card, hospital-to-hospital sharing and a MyData medication guide. Each tool also says whether you can use it today.
WhenYou are allergic to painkillers and cannot tell whether the pharmacy's medicine contains that ingredient
Registering the NSAID class (ATC M01A) as contraindicated is designed to cover its 120 ingredients plus 28 more from the same class that come as patches, eye drops and gargles.
“It is great that I no longer have to write it down, memorize it and explain it at every hospital.”Google Play review, March 2022 (translated)
Only patients registered at a participating hospital can use it. Answers compare the drug with what clinicians entered and do not replace medical care.
Full project recordAn example for a patient with an NSAID allergy.
WhenIt is hard to explain your reaction accurately in an emergency room or a new hospital
The old card only said what had happened. This card also shows, like a traffic light, the drugs to avoid and the drugs you can take instead.
Source: project final review and final report. With the Seoul National University R&DB Foundation; Kakao Healthcare as contractor.
Full project recordWhenYou get medicines from several hospitals and do not know what to watch for
It starts from the one file you downloaded yourself, with no link to the hospital's system. Guides pile up by date so you can open them again at any time.
Also checked: drug interactions, the older-adult DUR list, Beers criteria, anticholinergic burden and fall-risk drugs. Huray Positive distributes Yagirang.
Full project recordA fictional patient. Real guides reach patients only after a doctor reviews them.
WhenYou were diagnosed with a drug allergy but were handed only a generic leaflet
Source: values reported in a 2026 conference abstract. A separate study from the MyData field test.
Full project recordWhat should I tell the pharmacist?
"I had anaphylaxis after taking amoxicillin. I must avoid amoxicillin, and other penicillins and cephalosporins need to be checked with a doctor."
Written for Kim ○○, the fictional patient on the card above.
WhenA doctor at another hospital cannot see your allergy record
Led by the consortium of Prof. Hye-Ryun Kang, Seoul National University Hospital. Min-Gyu Kang set the sharing standard and refined the FHIR allergy profile.
Full project recordPick the closest situation to see a first step you can take today. The services named here run in Korea.
This guidance does not replace medical care. Talk to a doctor or pharmacist before stopping or changing a medicine. For urgent symptoms such as breathlessness or a swelling throat, call emergency services (119 in Korea).
Society President's Award, Korean Society for Patient SafetyResearch on a QR Digital Drug Safety Card that lets patients keep and share their own reaction records
Excellence Award, Health Information Exchange best-practice contestKHIS, sharing drug allergy records through the Health Information Exchange system
Minister of Health and Welfare commendation6th Healthcare Data Innovation Forum, a standard model for sharing drug allergy information
Grand Prize, Smart App Award Korea, health and medicineDrug Allergy Alert
Associate Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine, Chungbuk National University College of Medicine, and an allergist at Chungbuk National University Hospital (CBNUH), certified in medical informatics. Since March 2015 he has seen patients at CBNUH and built the tools himself so that drug reactions do not happen twice.
From March 2026 he spends a year as a Visiting Researcher at Harvard Medical School and the CAMCA group, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, studying how medical AI can work with the records patients carry. Full CV