2021 International Conference on Future Healthcare and Economic Development (Smart Healthcare and Medical Innovation for the New Normal)

Pic.1 The opening of the 2021 FHED November conference

Following the success of the September “2021 International Conference on Future Healthcare and Economic Development ”conference, the “Smart Healthcare and Medical Innovation for the New Normal" international conference was held at 3F Shangri-La Tainan in an online-merge-onsite mode from 22 to 26 November.

Based on the soft power of the Southeast Asia and Taiwan Universities (SATU) President's Forum,  and supported by the Global Academic Industry Alliance (GAIA), the conference was organized by 3 Centers of National Cheng Kung University (NCKU)  together: Medical Device Innovation Center (MDIC), Clinical Innovation and Research Center (CIC) and MOST AI Biomedical Research Center (AIBMRC). 

The speakers and participants were from more than 10 countries, including the United States, Russia, Paraguay, United Kingdom, Italy, and Poland. The majority were from Asian countries such as Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, the Philippines, Myanmar, Malaysia, Indonesia, India, Japan, and Taiwan.

Pic.2 Online-merge-onsite mode

The main theme, "Smart Healthcare and Medical Innovation for the New Normal", was aimed at intelligent medicine and medical innovation. Furthermore, the conference focused on 4 subtopics: establish a value-chain platform for international cooperation, assist institutions in building their international network, understand current trends of healthcare technology, and satisfy future healthcare needs in the upcoming aging society and post-pandemic era.

"We hope that through this conference, attendees could gain the information of accurately handling medical trends, building a healthcare network, and offering better healthcare service by a lower budget hereafter." stated the president of NCKU, Huey-Jen Jenny Su.

The Vice Superintendent of NCKU Hospital, Dr Wen-Chien Ko, indicated "During the post-Covid era, in response to the promoting public policy of precision medicine innovation and health sustainability, through latest technology will NCKU accelerate the transformation and application of smart medicine. Also, we will undertake the caring of health for all and elderly care as our social responsibility and our mission, in order to drive the development of health innovation industry."

NCKUH shared the process of physicians inspired by AI technique development and subsequently applied AI assistant medical care to improve health for all. NCKUH has been developing AI medical imaging such as AI-Alert for Cerebral Hemorrhage and Pneumothorax at ER, combined with the E-Dashboard to improve the ER arrangement, also reduce patients’ waiting time. Besides, the utilization of big data in cardiovascular disease offers doctors more information before treatment, which enhances the medical quality.

Dr Wen-Chien Ko also said that NCKUH will dedicate to developing integrated elderly smart medical healthcare mode to build a cross-specialist, cross-medical, cross-discipline and wall-less smart medicine for offering the best healthcare quality. Moreover, by setting the example, NCKUH wishes to create a new medical era with the whole nation.

Pic.3 Dr Chih-Han Chang introducing MDIC

The Director and Professor of Medical Device Innovation Center of NCKU, Dr Chih-Han Chang, said, "MDIC has just reached its 10th anniversary since its establishment in 2011. Starting from focusing on the medical device in orthopedics, dentistry, and rehabilitation, now we gradually step into smart medicine and target to develop precision medicine. MDIC has already coached 17 start-up companies and tutored more than 30 pieces of medical device license applications successfully so far. With great resources and our supporting system, MDIC is willing to cooperate with personal workers, teams, businesses and institutes aiming at medical device start-ups.

Dr Yi-Shan Tsai, the current Director of Clinical Innovation and Research Center(CIC) in NCKU Hospital, mentioned that CIC sets the goal of innovation, incubation and integration and expects to connect clinical resources with AI techniques for developing smart medicine and healthcare.

The Director of AI Biomedical Research Center, Dr Sheng-Fu Liang, said that after established the center of Taiwan AI for only 1 year, the MOST AI Biomedical Research Center(AIBMRC) has received strong support from MOST. AIBMRC cultivates the top-most smart biomedicine AI talents and innovation technique research and development. They also provided professional coaching for cross-hospital verification of the smart medical device development team, information security protection and smart medical device license application.

Pic.4 Dr Fong-Chin Su interacting with the speaker

The conference aims to connect academic research to related industries for building a new AI  biomedical innovation ecosystem. Furthermore, welcoming more international cooperation to improve the development of advanced technologies, develop innovative solutions, and deepen the application of smart medicine applications through the cross-disciplinary, cross-institution, cross-cultural knowledge exchange and research cooperation to react to the significant challenge of this era.