"In South Korea, not all orphan drugs are reimbursed by the National Health Insurance Service primarily because they are different from drugs to treat rare diseases from the legal perspective", talked Prof. Lee at the 7th K-Life Bio Forum, held on September 26, 2023 at the National Assembly, co-sponsored by the Korean Pharmaceutical Association and Congressman Min-Suk Kim, the Democratic Party of Korea. Prof. Lee continued saying "This is why so many orphan drugs cannot be accessed by those who need them desperately although the orphan drugs have been approved the the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety, the regulatory authority in South Kore." Furthermore, Prof. Lee pointed out the drawbacks of reimbursement decision made by the HIRA solely dependent upon the evaluation of cost-effectiveness based on incremental cost-effectiveness ratio or ICER. "We need other funding mechanisms than the national health insurance for patients with rare diseases to get access faster to the orphan drugs they cannot live a quality life without", Prof. Lee stressed. Several news paper articles reported what Prof. Lee presented at the Forum, one of which can be found here. 

Prof. Howard Lee was invited to an online forum organized by the Federation Peruana de Enfermedades Raras or FEPER on February 28, 2023. In his talk, Prof. Lee summarized the current drug lags for orphan drugs in South Korea, followed by the challenges and issues for delayed and less-satisfactory reimbursement of orphan drugs. Prof. Lee concluded his talk by proposing new policies and systems to increase the accessibility of orphan drugs in South Korea. They included:1) reduce drug lags, particularly approval lags by the regulatory agency, by continuously innovating and harmonizing regulation, 2) ensure orphan drugs be reimbursed as soon as possible, and 3) fill the gap between the legal status of orphan drugs and the reimbursement policy for drugs to treat rare diseases.