The Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service (HIRA) signed an agreement with Bahrain’s Supreme Council of Health (SCH) Wednesday, to help establish health information system infrastructure for implementing the National Social Health Insurance Program (SEHATI).
HIRA has been participating in the “SEHATI-IT Project” since March last year.
Attending the ceremony were HIRA President Kim Seung-taik, Health and Welfare Minister Park Neung-hoo, and Korean Ambassador to Bahrain Koo Hyun-mo. From Bahrain, SCH Chairman Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdullah Al Khalifa, Health Minister Faeqa bint Saeed Al Saleh, and officials of SCH and the health ministry took part.
Bahrain’s SCH requested HIRA for the additional agreement, under which the HIRA helps develop “National Electronic Medical Repository,” (NEMR) which will collect medical bills and treatment information from all medical institutions in Bahrain.
The $1.52-million contract includes standardizing medical terminology, defining collected information and database configuration.
The HIRA should also provide functions to generate statistics out of NEMR's data and support decision making for healthcare policies.
Besides the SEHATI-IT project, the HIRA also signed a memorandum of understanding to specify maintenance and service support for the project.
The HIRA expects that the SEHATI-IT project and the maintenance and repair project for the next five years will create more than 200 jobs and 30 billion won ($28.2 million) worth economic value.
“With this agreement, we will make all efforts to improve the efficiency of healthcare expenditure management for the Bahrain government and provide quality healthcare services to the public (of Bahrain),” HIRA President Kim said.
“We will expand export of the HIRA’s healthcare expenditure management system, which is recognized as globally competitive, to GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) countries, 10 ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) members, and India. By creating jobs and economic values overseas, we will fulfill our social responsibilities as a public entity.”
Health and Welfare Minister Park and his counterpart in Bahrain, Faeqa, also met one-on-one and signed MOU for bilateral cooperation in the healthcare sector and physicians’ training.