Why Taiwan?

High Quality Health Care in Taiwan

Medical tourism is rapidly expanding in Taiwan as the global community begins to realize the tremendous value offered at the island’s state-of-the-art medical facilities. Taiwan is also the only Asian nation to have received the ‘Plastic Surgery Innovation Award’ — often referred to as the ‘Nobel Prize of Plastic Surgery’ — from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, the largest plastic surgery specialty organization in the world. In 2000, the Economist Intelligence Unit, a leading research firm, ranked Taiwan’s healthcare system as the second best in the world, behind only Sweden.

Taiwanese hospitals use state-of-the-art equipment, such as volume computed tomography, MRIs and PETs for cancer screens, Ar-He cryoablation and cyber-knives for tumor treatment and image-guided radiation cancer therapy. The equipment quality found in Taiwanese medical facilities typically meets or exceeds the standard equipment found in US hospitals. There are currently more than 33 PET, 115 MRI and 321 CT scanners in regular use across Taiwan.

Always on the cutting edge of applied technology, Taiwan has been widely applying a picture archiving and communication system (PACS) for over ten years. This means hospitals in Taiwan are uniquely suited to provide healthcare services to patients outside hospital and clinic settings through the use of mobile health monitors taking advantage of WiMAX. To further protect patients outside the walls of healthcare facilities, hospitals have adopted the Ubiquitous Medical System for Home Care as a form of 24-hour secure health monitor. Taiwanese hospitals also regularly take advantage of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) for enhanced levels of care. The use of RFID enhances patient safety by assisting in the reduction of medication mistakes in the hospitals (the number one form of human error in most hospitals around the world), and assists in patient identification and tracking. Finally, Taiwan also utilizes a “smart card” system which keeps all patient information on one simple IC card, thereby simplifying records handling and reducing risk.

Significant Achievements and Milestones of Taiwanese Medical Science

1984: Asia’s first successful liver transplantation

1995: World’s first Endoscopic open-heart surgery

1995: Launch of NHI

1996: Asia’s first successful artificial heart transplant

1997: World’s first living-donor liver transplant without a blood transfusion

1998: World’s first successful cardiac cryosurgery

1999: Asia’s first micro-stereotactic deep-brain stimulation surgery for Parkinson’s disease

2000: Asia’s youngest ever heart transplant

2001: Invention of Potassium-hydrogen phthalate (KPH) therapy (treatment with the highest cure rate for Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC))

2001: World’s first skin stem cell treatment for corneal transplant

2003: Exceptional crisis management of SARS stops a likely worldwide epidemic

2003: World’s first successful autologous stem cell transplant to treat NPC

2004: World’s largest clinical trial of HPV-008 vaccine for treatment for cervical cancer.

2005: Asia’s first successful cross-matched living donor kidney transplant

2006: World’s first successful endoscopic KTP (potassium titanyl phosphate) laser surgery for recurrent NPC

2006: Worlds first pharmacogenomic testing to predict interferon therapy efficacy for treating patients with chronic hepatitis C