Canada and Taiwan should deepen their partnership in developing electronic healthcare systems to provide better services in both countries, industry experts said on Tuesday.
Joseph Cafazzo, the lead researcher at the Centre for Global eHealth Innovation at Toronto’s University Health Network, said Canada and Taiwan share the same values in healthcare research, including the principle of offering high-quality healthcare services to patients.
“But we also differ in many complementary aspects,” Cafazzo said at a panel discussion at the Canada-Taiwan e-Health and Innovation Summit, organized by the Canadian Trade Office in Taipei.
He said Taiwan is a powerhouse in information and communications technology, and understands manufacturing and scaling products, which complements the life science research in which Canada has expertise.
“So I think it’s a great partnership in terms of using our complementary skills and creating a healthcare system of the future,” Cafazzo said.
Canadian government statistics shows that the healthcare industry is the largest vertically integrated industry in Canada, which spends about 11.2 percent of its GDP on healthcare.
With almost 400,000 general practitioners, more than 700 hospitals and 1,600 long-term care facilities, Canada has a wealth of experience in managing health information across these areas and using information technology to reduce inefficiencies in the healthcare system.
Meanwhile, Ministry of the Interior statistics shows that as of the end of last year, senior citizens aged 65 and older accounted for 11.5 percent of Taiwan’s population. That ratio is likely to grow as life expectancy continues to increase and the local birth rate remains low, the ministry said.
The aging population in Taiwan and other nations, together with associated diseases such as diabetes, is driving the fast market growth of wireless patient monitoring devices, said Wu Guo-zua (吳國瑞), director of the Biomedical Device Laboratory at the Industrial Technology Research Institute.
The use of new patient-monitoring technologies can result in better patient care and the detection of serious health problems before they become an issue, Wu said at the panel discussion.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
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