Taiwan eyes opportunities in precision medicine industry
20-Apr-17, Taiwan News
Taiwan's biotech and pharmaceutical industry was one of the first to be named in the original Tsai Administration's 5+2 economic policy to transform the nation's economic structure, and is viewed as the upcoming medical treatment trend that Taiwan cannot miss out on.
Image: BioTaiwan
Taiwan is closely following the lead of the US in precision medicine. Last September, the US government invited Taiwan to join its global initiative to prevent cancer, the US Cancer Moonshot Plan.
A year earlier, President Barack Obama invested USD630 mn into the Precision Medicine Initiative, with the aim of gathering the health studies of one million people to build a shared cancer database platform. Since 2014, Taiwan has been trying to build its own 300,000 cohort open Biodata base, but progress has been hindered by the lack of talented big data analysis engineers.