The Kingdom has made great strides towards the development of its health system and facing the challenges to maintain the successes in the health care field, especially in addressing the phenomenon of the unprecedentedly increased cost of the provision of the health service as a result of the rapid development in the modern medical technologies and the increased cost of hospital construction and operation, in addition to the population increase, high proportion of elderly and the increased demand for the health services.
These factors have led to this ever increasing cost of health service at rates higher than the prices of other services, prompting the Ministry of Health to institutionally introduce health economics system into the Ministry's general structure, as represented by the establishment of a department for the health economics affiliated to the MOH Agency for Planning, then upgraded to the Assistant Agency for Health Economics under which there are three general departments: the Own Resources General Department, the Health Economics Studies General Department, and the Health Investment and Industry General Department.