Sun Kyung, the director of the K-Health MIRAE Initiative at the Korea Health Industry Development Institute, delivers an opening address during the World Bio Summit 2024 at the Songdo Convensia in Incheon, Monday. Courtesy of K-Health MIRAE Initiative

The Korean government is set to play a key role in advancing innovative research and development in the biosciences by strengthening global collaborations, according to the head of the K-Health MIRAE Initiative.

MIRAE stands for medical innovation, research and evolution.

"After the COVID-19 pandemic, the need for challenge-oriented innovative R&D has emerged. The Korean ARPA-H project aims to bring tangible results to the people beyond the 'valley of the dead.' We will set challenging goals and overcome them through innovative methodologies," Sun Kyung, director of the K-Health MIRAE Initiative, said during the World Bio Summit 2024 at Songdo Convensia in Incheon on Monday.

"Today's session will share country-specific approaches to challenge-oriented innovative R&D and explore global cooperation measures, and will draw concrete measures to strengthen global cooperation in the Korean ARPA-H project," he said.

Co-hosted by the Ministry of Health and Welfare and the World Health Organization, the World Bio Summit 2024 took place in Incheon's Songdo on Monday and Tuesday.

The event gathered global leaders in the bio field to discuss issues in the vaccine and bio sectors under the theme "Future Investments for a Healthy and Secure Decade."

Key figures from research institutions in the European Union, Germany and Denmark attended the session, which included presentations and panel discussions on the need to shift the paradigm from the existing "introspective, item-oriented" R&D ecosystem to a "problem-solving-oriented challenge-oriented innovative R&D ecosystem regardless of field and technology."

A session also took place at the summit on Monday on "Targeted, Transformative, and Trailblazing Breakthroughs."

Members of leading bio research groups of other regions, including the Joint European Disruptive Initiative, SPRIN-D of Germany and Denmark's Innovation Centre Denmark, presented the need for and examples of challenging innovative R&D.

In the panel discussion that followed, chaired by Hong Kee-jong, the K-Health MIRAE Initative's health security project manager, speakers and Kim Hani, executive director of the RIGHT Foundation, and Choi Youn-hee, a senior research fellow at the Korea Institute of Industrial Economics & Trade, discussed global cooperation measures, sharing insights and visions of challenge-oriented innovative R&D.

Benchmarked after the Advanced Research Project Agency for Health launched by the U.S. Biden administration in 2022, it is a mission-oriented R&D project aimed at discovering challenging health problems, such as the next pandemic, super-aging and essential medical crises, and creating research results with great social and economic ripple effects through developing innovative technology.

The Korean government plans to provide a total budget of 1.16 trillion won ($825.34 million) to the Korean ARPA-H project for nine years from 2024 to 2032.