Taipei Hospital tackles elder illness with AI tools

Taipei Veterans General Hospital expands AI and sustainability efforts while drawing foreign patients.

Taipei Veterans General Hospital is leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to reduce Taiwan’s “unhealthy years” and extend the quality of life amongst its aging population, as part of a broader strategy to modernise preventative care.

“The problem is that we need to reduce the number of unhealthy years in this longevity era,” said Dr. Albert Yang, Deputy Director of the Medical AI Development Centre. “We can apply AI in preventive medicine… to detect the disease in the early time, and hopefully we can also detect the risk of the disease when they are not having the illness yet.”

The hospital, part of the Go Healthy with Taiwan 2025 media campaign visits, is using point-of-care technology to monitor patients remotely and track risks for diseases like cancer, cardiovascular conditions, and neurodegenerative disorders. “We also want to develop a point of care technology to track the progress of the patient when they are at home,” Dr. Yang said.

Complementing these digital advancements are energy-saving and environmental efforts across the hospital campus. “We have been replacing all the lighting with LEDs,” said Dr. Cheng-Ying Shiau, Head of Health and Safety Administration. “Those elevators are equipped with brakes that retain the power… and fit back into the systems.” He added that the hospital also recycles lake water for air conditioning to lower electricity use and improve sustainability.

Internationally, the hospital is seeing increasing demand. “Last year, we received around 6,000 international patients,” said Dr. Yi-Jen Wang of the International Medical Service Centre. “Around one-third come from China and Hong Kong, another one-third from South Asia, and one-fifth from the U.S. and Europe.” Many seek advanced treatments including orthopedic surgery and specialised cancer therapies unique to Taiwan.