After designation of Research-driven Hospitals

Abstract

Received: January 13, 2014 Accepted: January 27, 2014 Corresponding author: Dae Ho Lee E-mail: leedaeho@amc.seoul.kr © Korean Medical Association This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons. org/licenses/by-nc/3.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. In April 2013, the Korean Ministry of Health and Welfare designated 10 hospitals as “Research-driven Hospitals” for 3 years, which meant that these hospitals met the predefined government standards for research in terms of organization governance, human resources, equipment, etc. The project on Research-driven Hospitals comprises two programs: one is the Evaluation and Designation Program, and the other is the Systems and RD and allocating the R&D Budget to only the winners of the competition among the designated hospitals according to the National Health Technology Plan. The R&D funding will be about 1.2 trillion KW ($1 billion US), and half of this funding will be allocated during the first 9 years. The former program is to formulate the standards and rules for Research-driven Hospitals and to evaluate and designate a qualified hospital as a researchdriven hospital. Although there have been many concerns regarding the project, we are hoping that this project will go well and achieve great success, making the Research-driven Hospitals in Korea among the world’s best. In fact, we hope that the Research-driven Hospitals will not only foster research that will bridge the current gap between basic and clinical research but also improve the current health care environment and develop the health technology industry, and finally help people lead healthier lives as well as help patients and their families recover faster from disease.