Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service (HIRA) will kick off its project to reform Bahrain’s healthcare management system, by holding an event in the Middle East country on June 4, the state-run agency said Tuesday.

HIRA심평원 and the Bahrain government signed the cooperative project on March 7 at the cost of 15.5 billion won ($13.8 million), and the Middle East country has just made the first payment of 3.9 billion won, 25 percent of the total, it said.

Officials from Bahrain’s project management office visit Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service during their eight-day visit to Korea, which ended last Sunday.

Attending the kickoff event will be HIRA President Kim Seung-taek김승택, its Bahrain project promotion team, the chairman of Bahrain’s Health Commission, and ambassadors of Oman and Kuwait, to coordinate details in proceeding the project.

The project calls for establishing three ICT infrastructure systems which will serve as the foundation of national healthcare insurance project in the Middle East country. The three systems deal with national medicine management, national health insurance, and national health information utilization, respectively. It will take about two years and eight months to complete the infrastructure construction, the agency added.

Since the contract signing in March, the two sides have prepared to begin the project with HIRA launching Bahrain project promotion team, and the Bahrain government establishing its project management office (PMO).

Officials from Bahrain’s PMO have completed an eight-day visit to Korea, during which they discussed the details of the project with HIRA. The Korean agency, too, will relocate its project team to Bahrain to analyze the country’s system for nine weeks beginning this Sunday. The analytical designing of systemic environment will likely continue for four to seven months.

“Carrying out the Bahrain project is like exploring a path that is not on the map,” HIRA President Kim said. “We will carefully examine how to execute the project along with the Bahrain government, to produce best results while minimizing possible risks.”

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