The National Health Institute Doutor Ricardo Jorge (INSA) is a public organization of the Ministry of Health, endowed with scientific, technical, administrative, financial and property of its own.

Founded in 1899 by Ricardo Jorge (Porto, 1858 – Lisbon, 1939), as laboratory of the Portuguese Health System, INSA develops a triple role as State Laboratory in the Health Sector, National Reference Laboratory and National Health Observatory.

INSA has operating units at its headquarters in Lisbon, two centers in Porto (Centre for Public Health Dr. Gonçalves Ferreira and Medical Center of Genetics Jacinto Magalhães) and Águas de Moura (Centre for Vectors and Infectious Diseases Dr. Francisco Cambournac).

INSA is organized in technical and scientific terms, in six major departments:
Food and Nutrition Department
Infectious Diseases Department
Epidemiology Department
Human Genetics Departament
Health Promotion and non Communicable Disease Prevention
Environmental Health Department

All operative units composing the departments develop multidisciplinary programmes in problem-areas of Public Health, namely performing R&D, health monitoring, training, laboratory external quality assessment and general health services.
Led by a Board of Direction, composed by a president (Fernando de Almeida) and one other member (José Maria Albuquerque), INSA’s human resources sum over 600 people, more than half of them with a higher education degree, including 60 with a PhD or equivalent.