National Health Insurance Administration (NHIA) Director-General Lee Po-chang said that since the government opened access of National Health Insurance data to academia and industries, the NHIA has approved dozens of projects submitted by eight research teams. These include a team jointly formed by the Taiwan AI Lab and the Taipei Veterans General Hospital, which has set out to develop a medical artificial intelligence solution by conducting big data analysis on National Health Insurance (NHI) data.

The approvals given to joint research teams formed by industries and the academia represent the breaking of a two decade-long convention where only academia were given access to the NHI data, while for the first time giving industries the chance to work with the valuable big data. Since its founding 24 years ago, the NHIA system has been the overseer of the medical data of Taiwanese beneficiaries and has over the years amassed a considerable collection of medical big data. Since 2000, the NHIA has begun research on its immense dataset, however, access was only given to the academia.

In June, the NHIA eased its data access requirements, opening the way for industries and the academia to jointly file applications. July 26, Director-General Lee said that as of July 24, the NHIA has given its approval for several dozens of applications filed by eight research teams. Director-General Lee said that while he is elated to see rapid growth in medical AI research, he said that the NHIA currently limits projects to those conducted by the academia or a combination of academia and industry and excludes applications filed by purely industry entities.

In addition, Director-General Lee said that Taiwan’s NHI program is represented by four major components, including the Central Intelligence System, MediCloud, E-Referral Platform and the Health Bank System. Data integration and opening access would be crucial in furthering development, Director-General Lee said.

【2019-07-29 / iThome】