Taiwan’s Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) and the Technology Agency of the Czech Republic (TACR) held their sixth conference to discuss technology exchanges in areas such as AI and self-driving vehicles, earlier this week.
The conference was hosted by TACR in Prague. Czech representatives attended the event and a Taiwan delegation led by the director general of MOST’s Department of International Cooperation and Science Education.
MOST said that during the Czech-Taiwan Technology Days conference, MOST and TACR agreed to launch a joint call for technology development programs, starting from the end of June, while the Taiwan delegation signed an agreement with the Czech Academy of Science on mutual visits.
Additionally, a MOST-funded Intelligence Manufacturing Systems Research Centre also signed a cooperation agreement with the Czech Institute of Informatics, Robotics, and Cybernetics to strengthen cooperation in the areas of AI and smart machinery development.
In terms of self-driving, the Taiwanese delegation shared information with the Czech participants about Taiwan’s recent research and development in the field, while representatives from the Czech Republic gave briefings on its progress in the area of self-driving vehicles.
After the conference, MOST delegation visited several research institutes in Hungary, including the Hungarian Zala Zone in Zalaegerszeg, western Hungary, which is the largest testing field for autonomous vehicles in central Europe.
Taiwan plans to model its CAR Lab project in Tainan on the zone.
Czech-Taiwan Technology Days has become a mechanism for the two countries to cooperate in the fields of academic research, applied technologies, and technology transfers.
According to Taiwan’s Department of Science and Technology, the country is one of the world’s leading producers of information and communication technology products. The government has been pushing to develop its technological capabilities in several sectors. One of which is the healthcare sector.
This year marks the 24th anniversary of Taiwan’s implementation of universal health coverage. Taiwan’s Ministry of Health and Welfare has developed tools to utilise AI and cloud computing to access the massive databases it has built over the last two decades. For instance, the MediCloud system was launched to enable healthcare providers to query patients’ medical records within the National Health Insurance (NHI) system, while the PharmaCloud system provides prescription drug information to physicians and pharmacists.
Currently, through digital cloud tools, community-based primary care providers in the country can retrieve test reports such as CT scans, MRIs, ultrasounds, gastroscopies, colonoscopies, and X-rays, from secondary and tertiary institutions and receive prescription information.
Digital health technologies have increased the quality of service and reduced costs, in terms of both time and money. They have also lowered the potential risks arising from repeated examinations.
In line with the goals set by the Health Workforce 2030 of the World Health Organization (WHO), Taiwan provides scholarships for in-service programs and higher education to thousands of people, in the fields of medicine, nursing, dentistry, healthcare administration, and public health.