Korea's Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Korea Health Industry Development Institute (KHIDI) recently held a launch ceremony for the Korean ARPA-H (Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health) initiative team where they introduced the first projects for 2024 and invited research proposals to carry them out.

The Korean ARPA-H initiative aims to address national challenges through ambitious projects, bringing transformative changes to healthcare and health services that can be directly felt by the public.

In May of this year, the government hired two project managers (PMs) to lead the missions of health security and welfare/care among the key missions of the Korean ARPA-H initiative. These PMs, based on big data analysis and expert consultations, have led the planning of total three projects.

The first Korean ARPA-H projects are: ① Developing ultra-long-term vaccine storage technology, ② Establishing a decentralised vaccine production system, and ③ Developing multi-modal therapeutic techniques for sarcopenia. 

The calls for research proposals for each project will be open for 30 days, from July 26 to August 26, with the selection of research institutions planned for September. The government will provide a total of KRW 55 billion in research funding over five years for these three projects.