Cabinet to Push Chinese “Medical Cloud”

 2012/01/17 Taipei, Jan. 17, 2012 (CENS)--The scientific and technological coordination panel under the Executive Yuan (the Cabinet) will enter a strategic alliance with IBM, NEC, Acer, and other major domestic ICT (information and communications technology) in June this year for developing the world's largest Chinese "medical cloud." The medical cloud will build up abundant medical information and develop 30 different kinds of business models, creating NT$10 billion of business opportunity. In addition to Acer, the project will benefit many domestic ICT firms, including Quanta, Inventec, and Hon Hai, as well as Chunghwa Telecom, Far Eastone, and Taiwan Mobile. The project will be publicized during an "open data" strategic meeting to be convened by the scientific and technological coordination panel tomorrow (Jan. 18), which will be attended by more than 200 persons. The project is a result of the visit by Cyrus Chu, deputy convener of the scientific and technological coordination panel, to NEC and Fujitsu last December. Taiwan and Japan will sign a memorandum of understanding for medical cloud project in the first half this year, and ACER and IBM will also take part in the project. IBM will provide the core technology for the project. Taiwan's health insurance program possesses the world's largest Chinese medical treatment database. Under the project, the Bureau of National Health Insurance will provide health insurance data, while National Taiwan University Hospital and National Cheng Kung University Hospital will provide medical treatment data. The Bureau of National Health Insurance will combine the two data and delete information on local people's identity before providing them to sci-tech firms for the establishment of cloud-end computing center and production of valuable information, for license to international pharmaceutical firms. In addition to the establishment of computing center, major sci-tech firms will also take charge of international marketing.