The 2022 UK-Taiwan Digital HealthProgramme, organized by the British Office and GeneOnline, successfully launched on Feb 10. The programme aims to offer insights into Taiwan's Digital Health market and regulatory landscape, along with matchmaking events linking both UK and Taiwan organizations to collaborate and explore areas of joint interest, research, and partnership.
Close to a hundred of the UK and Taiwan's Digital Health startups, researchers, and medical professionals joined the webinar with industry-leading experts from National Health Insurance (NHI), Taipei Medical University, Wistron Medical Technology, and KPMG in Taiwan.
In the opening remarks, Tom Burn, the Deputy Representative of the British Office highlighted similarities between Taiwan and the UK in their well-structured healthcare systems, such as the provision of high-quality patient care and treatments at a minimal cost. Mr. Burn also pointed out the UK’s strengths in medical research across a wide range of fields, most recently demonstrated by the rollout of the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine and the huge amount of genomics sequencing on COVID-19 samples. For its part, Taiwan has multiple world-leading technology and manufacturing companies.
Po-Chang Lee, the Director General of the National Health Insurance Administration (NHI) introduced the characteristics of the NHI system. Running with a single-payer system, the NHI has contracted with 93.03% of healthcare providers in Taiwan. Director Lee further brought up Taiwan's "My Health Bank," a synchronized system for hospitals and clinics to access patients' clinical data to provide better treatment. Additionally, 7 medical research hospitals in Taiwan are promoting AI model applications, in order to optimize the healthcare system and infrastructure.
What Makes Taiwan Stand out from the Other APAC Countries?
Marc Hsu, the Dean of the Office of Data Science from Taipei Medical University, highlighted the key features of Taiwan's healthcare system, including the smart health insurance IC card and NHI MediCloud system, which not only synchronize patients' clinical data and test results across the hospitals but also track and prevent the spread of COVID-19.
Hsu further mentioned two significant healthcare trends of digital health in Taiwan, including the management of medical records with IT tools in digital healthcare systems and precision medicine including genomics and life science instruments.
Brian Chong, Vice President of Wistron Medical Technology, thoroughly compared the UK and Taiwan's strengths in the digital health market and further identified the unmet market needs.
The complementary MedTech landscapes of the UK and Taiwan are ideal for collaboration asserted Chong. The UK companies are experts in medical research, software, and AI modelling, while Taiwanese companies mainly focus on ICT hardware technology and medical device design. Chong also pointed out that with Taiwan's strengths lay in ICT technology and the semiconductor industry, Taiwan can support UK companies in optimizing the manufacturing process and innovating digital health products.
JarretSu, Co-Head of Healthcare & Life Science from KPMG in Taiwan, addressed a wide range of Know-Hows, including the process of ensuring a smooth market entry, similarities in corporate and business laws and regulations for international collaboration.
Susaid progressive government deregulation of Tele-Medicine in the past year has allowed the disabled, foreigners, and patients from remote areas to have access to the treatments they need. From the legal aspect, precision medicine, regenerative medicine, digital medicine, and CDMO (Contract Development and Manufacturing Organization) have been included in the new amendment of the Act for the Development of Biotech and New Pharmaceuticals Industry.
Taiwan’s leading ICT giants and digital health service providers are now actively seeking investment, partnership opportunities and R&D projects to innovate the life science industry. Theprogrammewill offer B2B Matchmaking opportunities for both the UK and Taiwan organizations to connect and consolidate their ties in the digital health industry.
To register the B2B Matchmaking, click here: https://bit.ly/3GbxVyx
