Presidential address: launching the Korea Health Personnel Licensing Examination Institute, a government-supported special foundation from December 23, 2015

(page number not for citation purposes) 2016, Korea Health Personnel Licensing Examination Institute This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. On December 23, 2015, the Korea Health Personnel Licensing Examination Institute (KHPLEI) was launched as a special foundation supported by the Korean Government on the basis of the enact-ment of a new law. It functions as the continuation of the National Health Personnel Licensing Examination Board (NHP-LEB) of Korea, which was established in 1998 and persisted for 17 years. The NHPLEB of Korea was itself a continuation of the National Medical Licensing Examination Board of Korea launched in 1992. Therefore , 23 years have passed since the establishment of the National Licensing Examination Board for physicians, the first iteration of the organization in Korea. The significance of being a special foundation is that, under Korean law, it is possible for the management and development of the organization to be financially underwritten by the Korean government. For this development, we can thank Dr. Department of Rehabilitation Medicine at the Catholic University of Korea and volunteered at the Korean Medical Association with the title of spokesperson and executive member. As the first president of this new foundation, I have a great responsibility for the development and promotion of the organization and to improve national licensing examination services for a variety of health professions. I have taught medical students from 1981 to 2013 at Soonchunhyang University, Korea. I would like to make the most of my experience as a medical educator through my new role as the president of the KHPLEI. I propose the following goals during my three-year term: First, clinical skills tests shall be expanded to a variety of health professionals besides physicians and emergency medical technicians [1]. A clinical skills test is not easy to implement in the context of a national licensing examination due to its cost and the preparation needed on the part of examinees; however, to better evaluate the clinical skill of examinees, it should be the top-ranking goal of the KHPLEI. Second, smart device-based testing (SBT) shall be implemented in 2017 in the licensing examination for emergency medical technicians [2]. SBT is a type of computer-based testing in which the user's interface device is a smart device such as a smart …