Development of various kinds of physical and digital technology changes not only the landscape of industrial competition, but also many aspects of our social and economic life. Those technologies also have great potential to bring about digital transformation in biomedical and healthcare sectors, and help us over the challenges derived from ageing society and global diseases. How to bring in all stakeholders, enable industry to embrace digital transformation and cooperate across national boundaries has become one of the government's most important innovation policy agenda in recent years.

For this reason, under the guidance of Department of Industrial Technology (DOIT, which is part of the Ministry of Economic Affairs), Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (TIER), teaming up with Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), is setting “Digital Innovation for smart health and wellbeing” as the theme of International Conference on Industrial Technology Innovation (ICITI) 2020 conference.

TIER has been hosting this annual event since year-2000. With continuous support from DOIT, this conference has become one of Taiwan’s most important forums on the topic of innovation. Over the years, this event has also gained international interests, and has been instrumental in connecting the dots that led to many important development projects.

Since 2008, DOIT has been encouraging and facilitating domestic companies and RTOs to build active cooperation with partners in Europe on innovation and technology development. Companies successfully got involved in the European Research & Innovation projects, or R&I for short, were provided with financial support from MOEA. To date, Taiwan has taken part in 43 such projects. It is worth mentioning that Taiwan has a success rate of 24.6% compared to 15.4% overall average under the H2020 framework. Due to Taiwan's prowess in the ICT industry, more than 50% of the research and innovation projects with Taiwan participation were ICT related. For example, one of ITRI’s labs initially joined the EU’s 3CCar project to develop some key components for electric cars. The successful partnership led to two follow-on projects, i.e. Autodrive and AI4DI. Another example is HPC, which was a core IC producer in the photonics field. It has taken part in five EU projects since 2007. Through such experience, HPC has transformed into a multiple-solution provider in bio-medical, semiconductor and environment monitoring. As the result, HPC is now a key player in a niche global market.

Moreover, in 2015, MOEA and DG CONNECT decided to boost international cooperation on 5G through the process of opening call for proposals. There were productive exchanges and collaborations in the 1st and 2nd calls for proposals, and this allowed both sides to take advantage of their respective strengths in 5G research capability and testbeds/facilities. Going forward, we hope to maintain a durable partnership with the EU on ICT related technologies, especially in the areas of B5G/6G, AI, and other applications. This is also in line with what Taiwan government has been striving to achieve - the digital transformation of our country’s various industries.

Since 2017, we have dedicated this conference to being part of our agenda to pursue higher productivity, stronger growth, and substantially improved personal wellbeing through digital transformation. There is no doubt that working with the EU had a positive impact on our pursuit, and the experience has been mutually beneficial.

Based on this successful experience, we hope today’s event will expand our collaborative Research and Innovation activities to new application areas, such as smart health and wellbeing, smart manufacturing, smart mobility, and circular economy, etc.