Taiwan's Top Medical Centers Embrace NVIDIA AI to Enhance Healthcare

Taiwan’s leading medical centers, the National Health Research Institute (NHRI) and Chang Gung Memorial Hospital (CGMH), are set to advance biomedical research and healthcare for patients by embracing accelerated computing and generative AI. These technologies will be applied to a wide range of applications, including imaging, enhancing patient care, streamlining clinical workflows, and drug discovery research, according to a recent report by NVIDIA Blog.

AI in Disease Prevention and Treatment

According to Dr. Hung-Yi Chiou, director of the Institute of Population Health Sciences (IPHS) at NHRI, AI’s capacity to analyze vast datasets quickly and accurately will transform disease prevention and treatment. “With AI’s ability to analyze vast amounts of data quickly and accurately, we can develop personalized medicine strategies and early intervention methods that were previously unattainable,” he said.

Dr. Wen-Jin Cherng at CGMH echoed these sentiments, highlighting the potential of AI in healthcare to improve diagnostic accuracy, treatment predictions, and patient recovery times. “The transformative potential of the NVIDIA Blackwell platform allows us to integrate advanced AI capabilities into our medical practices, enhancing patient care and streamlining clinical workflows like never before,” Dr. Cherng added.

NHRI’s Role in AI-Driven Healthcare

NHRI is pivotal in advancing public health through biomedical research and innovation in Taiwan. The integration of NVIDIA accelerated computing into its IT infrastructure signifies a major leap forward in AI-driven healthcare. NHRI’s collaboration with NVIDIA also focuses on developing large language models tailored specifically for Taiwan’s healthcare needs.

Dr. Feng-Chi Chen, deputy director of IPHS at NHRI, noted the challenges posed by traditional Chinese medical records and genomic data, emphasizing the need for localized solutions. “NVIDIA accelerated computing enables us to create these solutions, ensuring that our healthcare system remains at the cutting edge of medical research,” Dr. Chen explained.

CGMH’s AI-Enhanced Healthcare System

CGMH, one of Taiwan’s largest healthcare systems, operates a network of 10 hospitals with over 11,000 beds and serves millions of outpatients annually. The hospital network plans to leverage NVIDIA’s Blackwell platform to expand AI services, enhance patient care, and streamline clinical workflows across all its facilities.

Dr. Chang-Fu Kuo, director of the AI center at CGMH, stated, “With the computational power of Blackwell, we can expand our language model services to all hospitals under our umbrella, enhancing professional support, patient care, and streamlining clinical workflows.”

NHRI and CGMH Pioneering Medical AI

NHRI currently uses six NVIDIA DGX A100 systems for cloud and data center services, focusing on biomedical model training and genomic analysis. By harnessing NVIDIA’s accelerated computing, NHRI is addressing public health issues, including predicting chronic disease risks through comprehensive genetic and environmental parameter analysis.

CGMH utilizes a diverse array of NVIDIA hardware, including H100 and A100 Tensor Core GPUs, for medical imaging and other applications. The hospital system aims to use Blackwell for large language model training and deploying service robots while maintaining patient data privacy through on-premises data processing.

Technologies at NHRI and CGMH are being applied in various medical applications, such as:

• Clinical Decision Support System: Provides clinicians with access to up-to-date data and guidelines while ensuring patient data confidentiality.
• Patient Interaction System: Enables patients to interact with robots for medication and medical condition inquiries, reducing the burden on medical staff.
• Medical Imaging: Uses AI to enhance radiology and other imaging tasks, representing one of the most mature AI applications at CGMH.
• Precision Medicine: Transforms large-scale genomic data into readable medical reports, supporting whole genome and exome sequencing.
• Expansion of AI Services: Extends language model services across all CGMH hospitals using the Blackwell platform.

Other AI applications at NHRI and CGMH include early detection of colorectal cancer, autoimmune disease screening, and kidney disease prediction. The adoption of NVIDIA’s accelerated computing technologies by these institutions underscores the growing importance of AI in medical research and healthcare delivery. With these advancements, Taiwan is poised to make significant strides in improving patient outcomes and advancing biomedical science.