Vice President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday urged government departments, medical firms and the private sector to make use of the National Health Insurance Administration’s (NHIA) big data to accelerate the development of smart and precision medicine.
Lai made the remark in Taipei yesterday at an NHIA conference, which showcased the work by 12 research teams that used artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze National Health Insurance data.
NHIA Director-General Lee Po-chang (李伯璋) said that the administration in 2018 joined the Asia Silicon Valley Test Beds Project launched by the National Development Council to build a platform to develop AI technology using NHI data.
Photo: Wang Yi-sung, Taipei Times
After completing a process to strip identifying data from billions of lines of NHI medical records, a pilot project to build AI models from computerized tomography and magnetic resonance imaging images opened to applications in June last year, Lee said.
Fifteen research teams — nine from the medical field and six from academia, with 10 involving industry-academia partnerships — were approved for the project, he said.
Families have been impoverished due to illness or become ill due to poverty, so several hospitals worked to address the situation, Lai said.
However, what solved this social problem was the establishment of the NHIA in 1995 and cooperation from the medical field, he said.
In the past 25 years, the NHIA has protected health equity of people in Taiwan and achieved a satisfaction rate of more than 90 percent, the highest among all of the public policies the nation has ever implemented, he said.
To face the COVID-19 pandemic, the NHIA and healthcare professionals once again teamed up to protect people’s health, by serving as logistics headquarters and front-line guards, Lai said.
The NHIA applied its NHI data to help fight COVID-19 by tracing travel and contact histories, as well as facilitating the government’s mask rationing system, he said.
The NHIA has another important role: Cooperating with other government departments and the private sector to apply NHI big data — including about 65 billion medical record entries from the past 25 years and about 2.23 billion medical images taken since 2018 — to push forward smart and precision medicine in Taiwan, Lai said.
With research teams from the medical field and academia having joined the pilot project, many outstanding preliminary results have already been achieved, he said.
They should keep up the good work, he said, adding that the government’s job is to loosen regulations, offer more opportunities for experiments and ensure access to data.
Lee and Quanta Computer chairman Barry Lam (林百里) in March signed a memorandum of understanding, according to which Quanta Computer is to donate an integrated platform to the NHIA to build a customized environment to accelerate AI applications and the use of NHI data, the NHIA said.
NHIA chief secretary Yeh Feng-ming (葉逢明) said that the anonymized medical records of about 3.5 million non-natural people — or deceased individuals — have been uploaded to the platform, and companies can apply to use the data to build AI models to facilitate medical treatments, healthcare management and disease prevention.
Taipei and New Taipei City government officials are aiming to have the first phase of the Wanhua-Jungho-Shulin Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) line completed and opened by 2027, following the arrival of the first train set yesterday. The 22km-long Light Green Line would connect four densely populated districts in Taipei and New Taipei City: Wanhua (萬華), Jhonghe (中和), Tucheng (土城) and Shulin (樹林). The first phase of the project would connect Wanhua and Jhonghe districts, with Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall and Chukuang (莒光) being the terminal stations. The two municipalities jointly hosted a ceremony for the first train to be used
MILITARY AID: Taiwan has received a first batch of US long-range tactical missiles ahead of schedule, with a second shipment expected to be delivered by 2026 The US’ early delivery of long-range tactical ballistic missiles to Taiwan last month carries political and strategic significance, a military source said yesterday. According to the Ministry of National Defense’s budget report, the batch of military hardware from the US, including 11 sets of M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) and 64 MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile Systems, had been scheduled to be delivered to Taiwan between the end of this year and the beginning of next year. However, the first batch arrived last month, earlier than scheduled, with the second batch —18 sets of HIMARS, 20 MGM-140 missiles and 864 M30
Representative to the US Alexander Yui delivered a letter from the government to US president-elect Donald Trump during a meeting with a former Trump administration official, CNN reported yesterday. Yui on Thursday met with former US national security adviser Robert O’Brien over a private lunch in Salt Lake City, Utah, with US Representative Chris Stewart, the Web site of the US cable news channel reported, citing three sources familiar with the matter. “During that lunch the letter was passed along, and then shared with Trump, two of the sources said,” CNN said. O’Brien declined to comment on the lunch, as did the Taipei
A woman who allegedly attacked a high-school student with a utility knife, injuring his face, on a Taipei metro train late on Friday has been transferred to prosecutors, police said yesterday. The incident occurred near MRT Xinpu Station at about 10:17pm on a Bannan Line train headed toward Dingpu, New Taipei City police said. Before police arrived at the station to arrest the suspect, a woman surnamed Wang (王) who is in her early 40s, she had already been subdued by four male passengers, one of whom was an off-duty Taipei police officer, police said. The student, 17, who sustained a cut about
RSS