By Tamra Sami
Keeping innovation growing at a fast clip while retaining new global supply chain capacity built up during the pandemic were the main topics of discussion at the BIO Asia-Taiwan conference July 27 in Taipei.
With the theme of the conference, “Connecting the Asia Value Chain,” Taiwan Vice President Ching-Te Lai said the pandemic has demonstrated Taiwan’s resilience as well as the strength of the global biopharma industry.
“The COVID-19 pandemic caused us to change our lifestyles, but it also led to further integration between the biotech and ICT [information and communications technology] industries. Innovative technology can help make medical systems more efficient and serve the public better.
“Looking to the future, Taiwan’s smart technology and medical capabilities will continue to drive our biomedical industry and turn Taiwan into a hub for biotech,” he said, noting that the country is acting on a strategy that will tap its capabilities and allow it to play a bigger role in the global biotech industry.
Taiwan’s Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical Industries Promotion Office (BPIPO) is spearheading this national health initiative that it hopes will make Taiwan a one-stop shop for innovation.
At the core of this initiative is a shift to precision medicine driven by individual patient-level data that is finally becoming a reality.
To that end, Taiwan’s BPIPO innovation project harnesses artificial intelligence, biomedical data and ICT data to deliver precision medicine.
The country’s renowned ICT industry forms the backbone of the precision health initiative that will make the country a global R&D hub. A data integration platform includes sample collection and gene sequencing and analysis from a national biobank integration platform. These data can inform Taiwan’s 21 clinical trial centers.
The country’s smart city initiative called Health Smart Taiwan includes hospitals, clinics and industry to link smart health care products and solutions that are coupled with a national health insurance system that is increasingly using AI applications for digital imaging.
Laura Matz, chief science and technology officer at Merck KGaA, said the industry is moving from a state of evolution where nature inspired advances in discovery to a revolution of cell applications from those insights and understanding of biological systems.
But bringing data together and preparing for the needed computing power to gain further insights will be a major challenge, she said.
This acceleration of digital capability becomes revolutionary in terms of “what we can do and the power we have,” she said.
Coining it “bioconvergence,” this multidisciplinary approach harnesses synergies across digital and material science combined with biotechnology to improve the speed and impact of scientific discovery.
One area that Taiwan can differentiate itself is through its databases for real world data, said Mick Stanley, general manager for Glaxo Taiwan Ltd.
In fact, the Taiwanese government should adopt similar initiatives to Australia in terms of incentives for bringing in more clinical trial activity, he said.
In 2021, International Research-Based Pharmaceutical Manufacturers (IRPMA) members conducted more than 152 clinical trials in Taiwan, and they plan to conduct more than 250 trials in 2022, said Ramanathan Velayutham, standing director of IRPMA, and general manager for Abbvie Inc. in Taiwan.
Source: https://www.bioworld.com/articles/521121-taiwan-can-help-biopharma-use-data-more-smartly-to-keep-innovation-moving