New President Kim Sun-min of the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service (HIRA). (Photo: HIRA)

The Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service (HIRA) is opening to the world clinical data on Korean COVID-19 patients for research purpose.

HIRA and the Ministry of Health and Welfare jointly decided to disclose the data on Korean COVID-19 patients, whose names remain anonymous, and conduct collaborative research among prestigious academics and governments around the world.

Initially, HIRA will convert quality clinical data related to COVID-19 into cohort data before sharing the result values through analysis code. Original data will be kept within the institutions and personal information will not be disclosed.

The COVID-19 data has been collected in the course of the nation’s active testing for the novel coronavirus and in the course of managing patients confirmed to have tested positive, based on Korea’s top-tier healthcare system.

The global collective research will center around all people’s medical claims data, possessed by HIRA, and private medical institutions’ own electronic medical record data. Clinical data will be standardized to be used for the research. Korean and international clinical experts related to infectious diseases and data scientists are expected to take part.

This network for joint research is the first example of disclosing to researchers across the world such data, which were hurriedly collected and refined amid a critical situation of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, in the form of public data.

The global collaborative study is designed to contribute to a decision-making in treating in the clinical field through diverse analyses using actual clinical data on hand representing the current situation, and it is also to be utilized for the purpose of governmental decision-making involving the distribution of medical resources.

President Kim Seung-taik, who served as the head of the HIRA at that time, said, “The latest novel contagious disease tends to spread beyond regions and borders at unpredictable levels, so it is very significant for the international society to demonstrate collective intelligence to swiftly respond through the network of distributed research.”

The study is expected to be a testbed for creating new values in the health and medical sector by employing big data analysis prior to the era of the 4th Industrial Revolution, thus distributing the benefits to all human beings, he added.

Korea has been recognized for having managed to trace, test and treat patents of COVID-19, whose number has topped more than 10,000, without any lockdown here.

The number of COVID-19 patients who have tested positive for the novel coronavirus stood at 10,564, with 222 deaths as of April 14. Korea’s mortality rate was about 1.4 percent, compared to 4 percent in the United States in which 554,226 people have tested for positive and deaths surged to 21,994.

Even the government’s initial response against the novel coronavirus outbreak has mixed evaluations since its cases once surged to the second-largest number in the world after China.

But there is no disagreement on the fact that Korea is the sole country in the world to put the virus outbreak under control without border restrictions.

About HIRA

Global awareness for the importance of Universal Health Coverage (UHC) - the guarantee that all people can access medical services without financial burden - has been on the rise. A third goal laid out by the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals is “to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being at all ages”.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has detailed specific objectives on how to achieve this goal, which include providing high-quality essential healthcare and ensuring access to safe, effective, and affordable medication.

Korea first introduced National Health Insurance (NHI) in 1977 and in 1989, just 12 years later, the NHI system was expanded to cover all citizens.

Through ceaseless effort to further improve this system, Korea stands at the forefront of achieving Universal Health Coverage by reducing the financial burden of medical expenses on its citizens while providing higher quality medical service to more people.

At the center of these achievements stands the Health Insurance Review & Assessment Service (HIRA).

Utilizing an exceptional IT system, HIRA serves as a strategic purchaser for UHC by efficiently managing medical resources, assessing the cost and quality of medical services, increasing health insurance coverage, and supporting policies to strengthen primary medical care.

HIRA currently shares its experience with various members of the international community and will continue this kind of international cooperation in order to contribute to the achievement of UHC and betterment of healthcare services worldwide.

We hope that you take an interest in and help to support us in all our endeavors.