The International Society for Quality in Health Care (ISQua), a nonprofit organization dedicated to healthcare improvement, will launch its 39th annual international conference in COEX, southern Seoul, this Sunday with a walking parade.

Korea will host representatives from over 70 countries, with approximately 2000 participants anticipated to attend this year’s ISQua conference scheduled to run for four days from Sunday to Wednesday. 

The conference's inaugural day will commence with the K-Walking Parade, featuring healthcare quality professionals from across the globe walking through Seoul's Samseong-dong neighborhood near Bongeun Temple at 8 a.m. on Sunday. This event is an integral component of the week-long Mint Festival that commenced on Monday.

The inaugural Mint Festival is an awareness-raising campaign to draw public support for medical quality management and patient safety activities under the theme, “Quality and Safety of Medical Care We All Share.” The conference will higlight the theme of looking to the horizon of quality and safety by combining technology, culture and coproduction through presentations from more than 160 expert speakers.

On Monday, the opening ceremony and plenary speech on the intersection of climate change and healthcare will be presided over by former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. Additionally, a session aimed at sharing Korea's healthcare expertise and experiences with global participants interested in Korean healthcare will be held.

"The Korean healthcare system has made leaps and bounds and has become globally well-known, but the institutional support for the development of medical quality management systems and patient safety culture is still lacking,” said KOSQua President Lee Wang-jun at the inaugural Mint Festival. "We hope that the 39th international ISQua conference will spread social consensus and awareness of this problem."

The ISQua  Seoul conference is jointly organized with the Korean Society for Quality in Health Care (KoSQua), Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service (HIRA), and the Korea Institute for Healthcare Accreditation (KOIHA).

ISQua consists of more than 90 healthcare quality-related societies and national organizations from around the world. Each year, ISQua holds the conference in a major country around the world, and the Seoul conference will be the second in Asia after the 2016 conference in Japan.