AI-Driven Healthcare Transformation at Healthcare Expo Taiwan 2025

Taiwan — Industry leaders, policymakers, and medical experts convened in Taipei on December 5 for the Global Summit on Transforming Healthcare through Digital Intelligence . With support from the Department of Industrial Technology (DoIT), ITRI is hosting it at Healthcare Expo Taiwan 2025. The morning session of the conference highlighted Taiwan’s strategic position at the intersection of a mature healthcare system and global ICT leadership. It also showcased how AI-Driven healthcare is reshaping the world. This includes accelerating drug development, transforming medical devices into software, and enabling companies to seize emerging opportunities in global trends.

Taiwan’s Strategic Role in AI-Driven Healthcare

Jian-Cheng Dai from DoIT opened the summit by emphasizing the need for global collaboration. “No country can face the future alone. Individually we are one drop; together we are an ocean,” he remarked.

He highlighted Taiwan’s unique strengths in healthcare: a mature healthcare system, leadership in ICT and semiconductors, a complete precision manufacturing supply chain, rich medical datasets curated over decades, and a strong culture of cross-disciplinary collaboration. These factors position Taiwan to lead in intelligent healthcare.

“AI-driven healthcare is more than technological progress; it is a rare opportunity for transformation,” Dai added.

AI, Innovation, and Regulation: U.S. Perspectives

Dr. Stephen M. Hahn, former FDA commissioner and CEO of Nucleus Radio, shared a clinical and regulatory perspective on AI’s evolution in healthcare. He outlined the shift from expert systems to predictive AI and now generative and agentic AI.

“AI is already involved in interpreting radiographs, evaluating skin lesions, and providing clinical decision support,” he noted. Despite this progress, he acknowledged concerns around bias, hallucinations, and patient safety. 

“The one guideline that you absolutely must follow is that you cannot add steps to a doctor’s workload. You must make it easy for them to do the right thing,”he also sharply noted.

Dr. Hahn cited examples of AI-driven innovation in oncology and regulatory affairs:

• Harbinger Health: AI enhances cancer detection in blood samples, navigating massive datasets from next-generation sequencing (NGS) to identify rare cancer cells.

• VieCure: This algorithm-driven platform improves compliance with precision oncology, increasing adherence from 20% to 80% without adding workload to physicians.

• Catalytic: The platform reduces regulatory submission preparation time to the FDA from six months to three weeks, demonstrating AI’s transformative potential in regulatory affairs.
  

Dr. Hahn emphasized that people remain central to AI implementation. Leadership, teamwork, and oversight ensure that AI augments rather than replaces human expertise. He also highlighted lessons from COVID-19, where rapid government and private sector collaboration accelerated vaccine development and real-world evidence collection.

“AI is table stakes for modern healthcare. The FDA has provided guidance for pre-planned assessment of AI-based platforms to ensure meaningful and safe patient outcomes,” he concluded.

AI Health for All: Addressing Equity and Access

Dr. Mark I Rosenblatt, Chief Executive Officer, University of Illinois Hospital and Clinics; G. Stephen Irwin Executive Dean, University of Illinois College of Medicine, warned against biased AI models trained on homogenous datasets. Using fundus imaging as an example, he explained how algorithms trained primarily on patients resembling the developer failed when applied to patients of African descent.

He also noted the lack of AI research for neglected diseases such as sickle cell disease, highlighting the need to focus on underserved populations. “Only two-thirds of Americans over 65 have access to smartphones or broadband, which exacerbates the digital divide,” he added.

“If you combine the search for artificial intelligence and cancer, there are almost 60,000 hits. But if you take a disease like Sickle Cell Disease, there are less than 100 hits. No one’s working on AI to help these patients, and I think that is something we need to be very thoughtful about. The idea of health equity is really a broader concept—that there is a right for everyone to have the opportunity to be healthy,” he said.

“Optimism is essential. By thoughtfully AI-Driven healthcare, we can ensure that its benefits reach all populations, not just a subset of patients,” Dr. Rosenblatt concluded.

Dear Patient, The AI Will See You Now

Dr. Rodolphe Katra, Global Chief AI Officer at Medtronic, addressed the looming healthcare workforce deficit. He projected a shortage of 13 million healthcare professionals globally over the next decade.

“Over the next decade, there’s going to be about a 13 million healthcare professional deficit worldwide. We’re not going to have enough doctors. This is a burning platform, and we need a quantum leap. I’ve always said AI is not a technology problem; it’s a change management problem. Consider the shift from horses to cars—it took only 13 years to go from ‘all horses, one car’ to ‘all cars, one horse.’ This change is happening just as fast.” Katra stressed.

He highlighted capabilities of AI-driven healthcare, noting that generative AI recently passed the U.S. Medical Licensing Exam with 98.5%, compared to the 60% passing threshold. “AI can assist physicians to dramatically improve diagnostic accuracy,” he said.

He described the evolution toward Healthcare 5.0, which emphasizes full personalization of care. Digital twins—virtual models of patients—enable simulation-based planning similar to flight simulators for pilots.

Drawing an analogy with the automotive industry, he described the stages of automation in healthcare:

1. Data crawlers analyzing real-world datasets.

2. AI supports solutions like polyp detection during endoscopy.

3. Partial automation, such as surgical planning.

4. Full automation, including autonomous robotic procedures.

Looking forward, he challenged the audience to imagine healthcare five to fifteen years from now. “With too few doctors and limited resources, when will we be comfortable saying: ‘The AI will see you now?’”

The Path Forward for AI-Driven Healthcare

The Global Summit on Transforming Healthcare through Digital Intelligence highlighted how AI, when thoughtfully implemented, can improve patient care, reduce disparities, and transform healthcare systems globally. Taiwan’s strategic position in ICT, medical data, and cross-disciplinary collaboration provides a fertile ground for innovation.

Speakers emphasized the critical roles of equity, regulation, and workforce readiness. AI alone cannot solve healthcare challenges; human oversight, leadership, and ethical implementation are essential.

As their consensus, “The next evolution of healthcare will not be led by any single country but through collaboration.” The summit reinforced that smart healthcare requires partnerships across nations, disciplines, and industries to ensure AI benefits all populations.

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Author

Steven Chung

紅杏枝頭春意鬧固然是眾人所追求的風景，但我願意說，青蘿拂行衣更能湧生感嘆。 願在海量晦澀的生醫資訊中，為您點亮一座心燈塔。鐘煌翔