Nearly four in 10 pieces of medical equipment at Kangwon National University Hospital have exceeded their recommended service life, putting the hospital among the highest-aging equipment profiles in Korea’s national university hospital system.
According to data submitted by 13 national university hospitals and their branches to the National Assembly Health and Welfare Committee, 9,376 of 30,971 pieces of equipment — 30.27% — were beyond their recommended service life. Nine of the 17 hospitals covered by the data had aging-equipment rates above 30%.
Kangwon National University Hospital recorded a rate of 39.67%, with 48 of 121 listed pieces of equipment classified as aging. That was the third-highest rate in the dataset, behind Seoul National University Dental Hospital at 48.0% and Chungnam National University Hospital at 43.1%.
Hospitals cited practical problems that can accompany aging equipment, including discontinued parts, delays in obtaining replacements, repeated breakdowns and higher repair costs. They also reported the potential for slower processing, system errors, lower image quality and delays to examinations or surgery schedules.
The figures do not mean every older machine is unusable, but they highlight a maintenance and investment problem for institutions that play a central role in regional and essential healthcare. The next question is whether hospitals and the government move from identifying aging assets to a funded replacement plan based on clinical priority and operational risk.