Abstract

Today, in order to more effectively cope with the emergence of various diseases and the rapidly-changing medical environment, several medical departments are conducting treatment collaborations within the university hospital. This collaborative care is very important and is already common in the medical field. Nevertheless, there is no research on this, especially how the departments are collaborating. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate how the characteristics of the treatment collaboration networks vary by year and season by exploring the relationship between the medical departments within the university hospital. This study analyzed the collaboration networks of 29 medical departments of ‘A’ university in Korea by dividing the collaborative care by year and season. Directed networks were constructed in response to departments requesting and departments requested for collaborative care. Betweenness centrality, eigenvector centrality, closeness centrality analysis, ego network analysis, and faction analysis were also conducted. This study performed the first treatment collaboration network analysis among medical departments, and is expected to present new insights into the location and spatial composition of medical departments in consideration of the knowledge transfer paths within medical institutions.