Taipei: Taiwan and Thailand have entered a significant partnership aimed at advancing artificial intelligence (AI) in the medical field. On Monday, a memorandum of understanding (MOU) was signed between Taiwan’s Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW) and Thailand’s Mahidol University to validate AI medical models, looking to hasten the commercialization of smart healthcare technologies.
According to Focus Taiwan, this MOU represents Taiwan’s first international AI validation mechanism and is a pioneering step in the global certification of medical AI. The agreement involves Mahidol University recommending AI medical models for testing in Taiwanese hospitals. Concurrently, hospitals in Taiwan will collaborate with Mahidol University’s affiliated hospitals to create pilot validation sites in Thailand.
Under the terms of the MOU, AI systems developed in either country will be eligible for paid testing at both locations, with mutually agreed terms. This initiative will receive support from the MOHW’s federated learning platform, which links four clinical AI validation centers in Taiwan. This platform allows institutions to train AI models without sharing raw patient data, thereby minimizing privacy risks while enhancing model reliability and stability, as stated by the MOHW.
Federated learning presents a method for training AI models without direct access to individual data, thereby facilitating the development of new AI applications. Since 2024, the MOHW has invested in four validation centers with databases that adhere to international standards and established a federated learning platform. These resources provide developers and researchers access to extensive, population-specific datasets, which are crucial for improving the quality and applicability of medical AI systems.
The MOHW emphasized that this partnership not only tackles key validation challenges but also propels Taiwan towards its goal of becoming a global innovation hub for smart healthcare.
