The Health Insurance Review & Assessment Service (HIRA) hosts an annual international symposium on issues related to healthcare policy that serves as a venue for discussion and information exchange among participants. Since the first event in 2005, the symposiums have been well-attended over the years by prominent foreign academics and healthcare experts from Korea and countries round the world. The biggest role of the symposiums, by far, is building a foundation for brainstorming on the direction that healthcare should take-at the level of individual countries as well as the international community as a whole-and ensuring the sustainability of such international brainstorming and follow-up efforts.