Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and vice-presidential candidate Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁) yesterday said that they would work to assist the biomedical industry through policies and law revisions.
Attending a conference for the biomedical industry, Tsai said that the industry in Taiwan is full of potential and that what makes the industry less competitive in the international community is the lack of government assistance.
“All of you here would know it better than I do that a critical element in the biomedical industry is the long period of product innovation, it takes a lot of capital and relies heavily on professional talent during research, translation, commercialization, clinical tests and certification,” Tsai said.
While Taiwan have experts in the industry with very good research facilities, the biomedical industry still faces the challenges of a limited domestic market, insufficient funds and limited clinical trial capabilities, since small and medium businesses play a major role in the nation’s economic structure.
“Taiwan certainly enjoys advantages in developing biomedical technology, what it lacks is a reliable government,” Tsai said.
“The government must have a vision and good strategies to help businesses to overcome difficulties in the development stages by integrating research, developing resources and establishing closer connections with the international market,” she said.
Tsai said if she were elected president, she would propose policies to encourage researchers to found new companies, help the industry to attract foreign talent, while revising residency and taxation laws for foreign workers.
The government would help the industry to connect with the international market while strengthening it through integrating resources and establishing a “biomedical corridor” that runs from the biomedical park near Academia Sinica in Taipei’s Nangang District (南港), the medical equipment research park in Hsinchu County’s Jhubei City (竹北), the Central Taiwan Science Park, all the way to Southern Taiwan Science Park, Tsai said.
Chen, who has a background in the biomedical industry, said that relevant laws, such as the Biotech and New Pharmaceutical Development Act (生技新藥產業發展條例), should be revised so that the government could be more helpful.
“Public servants’ mentality should be changed, because right now, they focus more on preventing mistakes and scandals, as well as monitoring, instead of mentoring the industry,” Chen said.
“To change that mentality, we should start by changing the law to give pubic servants a new, helpful role,” he added.
Chen said that when reviewing applications for subsidies, government agencies first calculate the percentage of success.
“But we should not fear failure, rather, we should tolerate it. As long as a lesson can be learned,” Chen said.
“If we cannot tolerate failure, then we should stick with traditional industries and avoid all attempts at innovation,” he said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater