Government to Support 1.469 Trillion KRW for Health and Medical R&D Budget Next Year

Infectious Disease Response, Fostering Advanced Biohealth Technologies, etc.

[Asia Economy Reporter Lee Gwan-joo] A total of 1.469 trillion KRW will be invested in healthcare research and development (R&D) next year. New projects in next-generation promising technology fields such as digital healthcare, healthcare data, and advanced regenerative medicine will be significantly expanded.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare, Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency, Ministry of Science and ICT, Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, and Ministry of Food and Drug Safety announced on the 29th that they plan to support the healthcare R&D budget, which was recently finalized through the National Assembly's approval.

The government will support a total of 128 projects focusing on four major areas: ▲strengthening infectious disease crisis response capabilities ▲fostering advanced promising technologies in the biohealth sector ▲expanding public interest R&D investments such as disease overcoming ▲supporting healthcare field-linked R&D.

Among the major new projects, in the field of strengthening infectious disease crisis response capabilities, 3.75 billion KRW will be invested in the development of antiviral therapeutics to prepare for new infectious diseases. 3.6 billion KRW has been allocated to the advancement of the pan-government infectious disease prevention system.

Additionally, 6.25 billion KRW will be newly invested in R&D and demonstration projects utilizing healthcare MyData technology, 7.5 billion KRW for demonstration and introduction of digital healthcare based on medical institutions, and 7.5 billion KRW for medical technology development projects based on virtual patients and virtual hospitals. A total of 5.1 billion KRW will be newly supported for hospital-based human microbiome R&D projects, which have recently attracted global attention. Cutting-edge technology development will also accelerate with 6 billion KRW for xenotransplantation R&D projects and 4.5 billion KRW for stem cell-based treatment technologies for intractable diseases.

Eun Seong-ho, Director of Advanced Medical Support at the Ministry of Health and Welfare, said, "We will devote efforts to developing healthcare technologies that can protect the lives and health of the people from new and variant infectious diseases, high-cost and severe diseases, and strengthen R&D of advanced promising technologies to enhance the global competitiveness of biohealth" and "we will continuously expand the scale of R&D investment and promote related policies so that healthcare R&D can become a foundation for providing higher quality healthcare to the public."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.