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Medicine research center proposal may be altered

The National Science Council (NSC) is exploring setting up a 700-bed clinical medicine research center in various hospitals and medical centers, rather than building a completely new facility at the Chubei Biomedical Park in Hsinchu County, council chief Chen Chien-jen (程建人) said yesterday.

Emerging from a seminar organized by the APEC forum in Taipei to review biomedicine policies followed by APEC member states, Chen told journalists the original plan to set up a 700-bed research center in the Chubei park was being reviewed in terms of cost and feasibility.

Medicine research

The center, designed to help evaluate the medical effects of medicines and technology developed by firms in the park, was originally considered a vital part of the council's plan to build the park into a regional bio-medical power base.

If the experiences of large local hospitals are any guide, Chen said, a clinical medicine research center of that scale would need to include various hospital departments in order to be feasible financially.

Chen said it would be much cheaper to have several hospitals with the status of regional medical centers -- such as the National Taiwan University Hospital and the Tri Service General Hospital -- run research centers with 100 or 200 beds each.

Finances

An independent center for clinical medical research would have difficulty surviving financially, Chen added.

The proposed Chubei park will house biotechnology firms devoted to the development of medical equipment such as medical imaging technology, as well as other medical products, while the development of new drugs should be the responsibility of Academia Sinica, Chen said.

The clinical research center has been at the center of a controversy, with Su Ih-jen, former chief of the Center for Disease Control, saying last month that it was a pork-barrel project.
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