Korean-style ARPA-H to Lead Healthcare Innovation Launched... Recruitment for Task Force Leader

The Ministry of Health and Welfare announced on the 29th that it will open a public recruitment for the head of the Korean-style ARPA-H Project Promotion Team to officially launch the Korean-style ARPA-H project.

A public hearing on the 'Korean-style ARPA-H Project' was held on the 27th of last month.

The Korean-style ARPA-H project is an organization modeled after the United States' Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H). ARPA-H is an institution established under the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2022, advocating an "innovative healthcare research system." It is based on the research model of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), focusing on strengthening NIH's research innovation and rapid support for industrialization.

The Korean-style ARPA-H project follows this model to promote mission-oriented research and development (R&D) that is high-cost and high-difficulty but has a significant ripple effect, aiming to solve national health challenges such as the next pandemic, super-aging society, and essential medical crises. It will support R&D to achieve five major missions: ▲establishing health security ▲overcoming unmet diseases ▲securing bio-health super-gap technologies ▲improving welfare and care ▲building a regional complete system for essential medical services.

To this end, the Korean-style ARPA-H project will minimize bureaucracy and manage research tasks flexibly and swiftly centered on project managers (PMs). Unlike existing R&D projects, PMs will be responsible for the entire cycle, from discovering challenging problems to pre-planning, selecting, and managing tasks.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare plans to establish the promotion team within the Korea Health Industry Development Institute, operating independently from existing organizations, and intends to recruit PMs starting next year to actively advance the Korean-style ARPA-H project.

Through this recruitment, a promotion team head with strong vision and leadership will be selected to lay the foundation for the Korean-style ARPA-H project. The promotion team head will oversee all promotion team duties, including establishing and executing project strategies, selecting, evaluating, and managing PMs, monitoring project progress, and domestic and international cooperation. The promotion team head will be required to work full-time to focus on overall operation and management and will be granted authority and autonomy as the general manager.

The announcement for the promotion team head recruitment will be open until the 27th of next month. Detailed recruitment information and submission forms can be found on the Ministry of Health and Welfare or Korea Health Industry Development Institute websites.

Jung Eun-young, Director of the Health Industry Policy Bureau at the Ministry of Health and Welfare, stated, “The Korean-style ARPA-H project is the first innovative R&D support system attempted in the healthcare field and will be a key to solving national challenges within the next 10 years.” She added, “We hope many experts with vision and capability will show interest and participate so that the project takes a strong first step, achieves innovative improvements in public health, and the promotion team becomes an organization that produces long-term results.”

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