(From：Central News Agency 2013-09-26)
Premier Jiang Yi-Huah said today that the biotech industry is a trillion dollar future star. He hopes there will be 5 to 10 successful launches of innovative biotech products in the next 3 years.
Premier Jiang chaired today’s administration meeting and listened to the presentation of the Taiwan Biotechnology Take-off Diamond Action Plan. The presentation started with an introduction of the overall plan given by Simon Chang, a Minister without Portfolio, followed by an explanation of the strategies, including the models for industrializing innovative products and healthcare management etc.
Premier Jiang said in the meeting that the government has listed biotech industry as one of the six emerging industries. It is a future star industry worth trillion dollars. The government will speed up the process for upgrading and transforming the industrial structure towards an innovation oriented industry. Premier Jiang expressed that he hopes 5 to 10 successful innovation cases can be produced in three years.
From 2009 to 2012, in the initial stage of the Diamond Plan, the targets were to strengthen the foundation of the biotech industry and to increase the value of the biopharmaceutical industry from NT$130 billion to NT$260 billion. In the second stage, from 2013 to 2015, the objective is to produce successful cases through three major approaches: innovative new drugs, industrialized medical device R&D and industrialized healthcare management services.
In the aspect of innovative new drugs, the Executive Yuan pointed out that the number of new projects under clinical investigation grew from 13 to 86 in the past 5 years. The progress has prompted the government to speed up the construction of the Academia Sinica Biotech Park, which will be the hub of new drug researches.
As for medical devices, the sales of the medical device industry grew by 10% in 2012 to NT$109.2 billion. The main products are glucometers, mobile scooters for the disabled and contact lenses. The export value also grew by 10% to NT$46 billion. As of now, there are 2 new medical devices under clinical investigation, and 8 cases have already passed the review and approval which may increase the industrial output by NT$2.19 billion in 2015.
As for the healthcare management services, a professional management team will coordinate and integrate the management of medical information, medical devices and supporting services. The plan is to launch the “integrated service” on the global market.
The Executive Yuan said that the healthcare in Taiwan has features of high quality and reasonable prices. Therefore, it is viable to integrate the services of healthcare, health information and care into one unique package and to brand this package as a MIT product in the global market. The Executive Yuan estimates the annual output could reach NT$6-10 billion.