The Southern Taiwan Science Park is home to semiconductor, optoelectronics, precision machinery, biotechnology and other high-tech industries, with abundant technical talents to jointly help Taiwan move onto the world stage. What you may not know is that the science park is also home to a blooming industrial cluster for medical devices. In addition to developing the new southbound market, the effort has been put into solidifying the domestic market in order to provide a foundation for adopting MIT dental devices. On September 18, 2020 (Friday), Metal Industries Research & Development Centre (MIRDC) invited members of Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW) along with dental associations and societies in Taiwan to visit the science park, thereby facilitating the exchange with the industry in the fields of medicine and health, realizing the technical capability of Taiwanese dental product manufacturers, and increasing the exposure and reliability of such products.
The biomedical cluster in the Southern Taiwan Science Park comprises an array of sectors, such as dentistry, orthopedics, medical cosmetology, diagnostic kits, metallic materials for medical applications, and smart medical devices. Now the science park is home to 80 biomedical device manufacturers, with 36 based in Tainan Science Park and 44 in Kaohsiung Science Park respectively. Among these manufacturers, 24 specializes in dental or orthopedic implants, together achieving a turnover of roughly $1.26 billion in 2019, indicating a 19.35% growth compared to $1.049 billion in 2018. This shows that Taiwan has advanced in terms of medical technologies, which simultaneously facilitated the development of dentistry related sectors.
In the past few years, Taiwanese manufacturers have proactively expanded their outreach in the Southeast Asian market since Southeast Asia is the fourth-largest market for dental products at present and geographical proximity makes it more accessible to Taiwan. In 2018, MOHW launched a project to assist high-end dental device manufacturers in Taiwan in entering the new southbound market. Under its assistance, Taiwan Dental Association has so far signed cooperative MOUs in medicine and health with the University of Malaya, the dental associations of Vietnam and the Philippines, and DAIY Hospital in Vietnam separately. In addition, four sessions of professional value-added oral health services were organized in Malaysia and Vietnam to promote MIT dental products. With the assistance of the MOHW, Taiwan Implant Technology Company and Eped Inc., manufacturers based in the science park, obtained a permit for supplying dental devices in Malaysia in December 2019 and February 2020, respectively, and Alliance Global Technology obtained a permit for supplying dental devices in Indonesia in March 2020. These efforts aimed to make the high-quality MIT products be visible to the whole world in different manners.
With more than a decade of efforts to develop the medical devices market, MIRDC has strived to reduce the dependence on imports by integrating technologies in a variety of fields and developing MIT products. During this event, MIRDC accompanied the guests to visit a number of manufacturers, including Taiwan Implant Technology Company, which focuses on dental implant systems; GeneOneDx, which has been developing nucleic acid detection kits for COVID-19; Alliance Global Technology, which specializes in dental implants; and Eped Inc., which develops dental implant navigation systems. In the future, MIRDC will continue to help medical device manufacturers in Taiwan in the hope of gradually transforming Taiwan into a big exporter of medical devices.