NCTU Boost Taiwan’s Frontier Technologies in Biomedicine

Smart Healthcare Promotion Office of National Chiao Tung University (NCTU) has focused on business incubation and acceleration in two major fields: smart healthcare and precision medicine. NCTU is now home to one translational research center and seven core research laboratories in biomedicine that coordinate interdisciplinary people and resources in biomedicine, AI, IOT, big data, electronics, mechanical engineering, and materials. Its aim is to actively accelerate the commercialization of frontier technologies. With over one hundred top scholars from different fields participating, NCTU has begun over one hundred cutting-edge research projects and the joint development of several dozens of technology with international partners. In Taiwan, NCTU is partnering with 7 key medical institutions and medical centers to launch clinical studies.

Incubator Brings Industry and Medical Experts to Clinical Applications

The incubation center has helped spawn over 100 startups to-date, with its Center of Industry Accelerator and Patent Strategy facilitating international connections. One representative projects is the combining of VR with brainwave sensing technology. A team from NCTU researching glaucoma-sensing brainwave technology collaborated with international experts in brain science and glaucoma to develop an early detection technique for glaucoma or other optic neuropathies. Currently, the technology can detect a 10% deterioration in the optic nerve and is being developed toward becoming a more accurate and affordable rapid diagnostic test.

NCTU Professor Yi-Pai Huang noted that recently, NCTU has had breakthroughs in smart healthcare, including AI, wearable smart medical devices, and advanced medical devices. NCTU has continued to develop precision medicine by integrating imaging, physiology, genetics, and big data from health records.

• Highlight 1: Artificial Intelligence
  A health care system combining deep learning and big data analysis has been developed which uses physiological signals to predict epilepsy or cardiovascular diseases. Meanwhile, the system can detect early signs of disease from the biological and medical information in the electronic medical records through data mining and novel algorithms.  In the future, the AI will continue to be trained with big data to gain the ability to provide a supplementary diagnosis to help doctors.

• Highlight 2: Smart Medical Devices
  Solutions in the prevention and accurate diagnosis of disease are being developed by integrating key physiological signals with VR/AR, computer vision and image processing, and wearable sensors. These projects include combining VR with brainwave measuring devices to detect abnormalities in the retina, helping with early detection of glaucoma and macular degeneration; predicting migraines with a wireless brainwave measuring system; contact lenses that monitor intraocular pressure; and 3D imaging techniques applied to cosmetic surgery and breast reconstruction.

• Highlight 3: Advanced Medical Devices
  Several collaborations are underway to develop novel treatment methods with a focus on medical equipment for the nervous system. The treatment leverages expertise in semiconductor and electronics to design a chip that detects biomarkers and has entered clinical testing. Recently NCTU has developed the world's first closed-circuit chip system for the treatment of epilepsy. A 92% epilepsy detection rate within 0.8 seconds has been verified in the animal model. Meanwhile, a 400-pixel artificial retina has been developed which will enter the trial stage in the next few years.

(Editing by Jim Shih, Research Center for Biotechnology and Medicine Policy)

• For more information see the Taiwan Healthcare+ and 2018 Taiwan Healthcare+ Expo