Korea Health Industry Development Institute (KHIDI), whose duty is to manage and supervise research and development projects, directly participated in some of them, damaging fairness in its original mission, National Assembly Budget Office said Thursday.

The parliamentary organization pointed out these and other problems in its analysis of the settlement account of the Health and Welfare Committee in 2016 fiscal year.

KHIDI_{한국보건산업진흥원} is promoting the “research and development project to create infrastructure for clinical trials” to reinvigorate the development of new drugs and medical equipment, and the Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW) spent 52 billion and 9 million won out of the total budget of 52.01 billion won ($44.37 million) for 2016, leaving only 1 million won unspent.

The institute’s role in the project is to pick primary and subsidiary participants, give them government subsidies and supervise research results and settlement of accounts.

According to the results of the budget office’s analysis, however, KHIDI has engaged in some of the research programs as their primary performer.

“The institute, a specialized organ, took part in some research tasks, including ‘R&D planning research to prevent and control chronic diseases based on digital healthcare and behavioral medicine’ and the ‘research to build global ICT-based healthcare service system by strategic nations’ in 2015, and in the ‘research to create foundation to make the most of healthcare big data’ last year,” the office said.

“Because these research tasks are mainly related to R&D planning study, the institute can be selected as their chief promoter given its expertise,” the office said. “When the supervisor and performer of these R&D projects are the same organization, it's hard to secure the fairness of management and supervision.”

The parliamentary organization asked the ministry and the institute “to come up with steps to solve problems of one agency playing two roles, caused by the ministry’s selection of the institute as the primary conductor of these R&D tasks.