Cheng Hong-Da from Taipei

Hsu Yu-Chin, Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), reaffirmed the MOST’s commitment to the promotion of the biomedical industry.  The MOST is to work in three directions: to improve the regulatory environment, to accelerate industrial upgrading and to promote the emerging industries.

The MOST officials visited the Executive Yuan to brief on the results of promoting the biomedical industry. Taiwan obtained the ICH membership last year. According to the MOST officials, the ICH membership will help Taiwan to bring the regulations into line with international practices, hence, support the export of the biomedical research results and products. The government has also made it a priority to discuss the National Drug Evaluation Center Establishment Act, the Medical Device Management Law, the Regenerative Medicine Management Policy and other related regulations in this legislative session.

Hsu Yu-Chin expressed that drugs and medical devices are two important areas in biomedical researches.  Last year, 6 new drugs developed in Taiwan obtained international marketing authorization; and 49 high value medical devices were approved by the US FDA.  Any legislative improvement will help the industry to make significant progress in the R&D of new drugs and medical devices.  

Chen Zhou-Rong, Deputy Director of the BioScience Division of the MOST, said that the Taiwanese government is working hard to combine the advantages of the biomedical industry and the IT industry with a view to promoting the three major emerging healthcare sectors: smart medicine, precision medicine and regenerative medicine.

The MOST will continue strengthening the Biomedical Industry Innovation Program, for example, to establish regulations for medical devices and emerging biomedicine (such as cell/gene therapies, smart medicine, etc.), to attract inward investment, to support exportation, to expand the scale of domestic drug market, etc.  The MOST will also continue integrating the new R&D clusters by facilitating the collaboration between the industry and the academia.

The National Biotechnology Research Park was inaugurated in October last year.  It will play an important role in biomedical R&D in the Asia-Pacific region.  The Building of the National Laboratory Animal Center was officially opened on January 17 and will support the researches of new drugs for cancer, immunity disorders, metabolism problems, etc.

【2019-03-07/Economic Daily】