Dr. Po-Chang Lee, Director General of Taiwan’s National Health Insurance Administration(NHIA), gave a keynote presentation in International Health Economics Association (iHEA) on July 7. The conference, which focused on the NHI in Taiwan, featured ‘How the IT system of National Health Insurance Plays a Role in Fighting COVID-19: the case in Taiwan’. This session explored how Taiwan uses a single-payer health care system with universal health coverage and how Taiwan implements contain measures for COVID-19  via NHI MediCloud  system and the NHI big data analytics in 2020. Taiwan’s effort in preventing the spread of COVID-19 has been recognized by session attendees.
iHEA is an important platform for discussing health economics and health care systems. NHIA has become a member since 2002. The keynote speech represented by NHIA during the session presented the achievement of single-payer health care system and enabled discussion and communication among international scholars and specialists.
The iHEA keynote conference on the NHI in Taiwan, which was held online on July 7, 2021, was chaired and moderated by Tsung-Mei Cheng of Princeton University (USA), followed by discussion with a panel of international experts, Andrian Towse, who is the Director Emeritus of the Office of Health Economics (UK), KOBAYASHI Yasuki, who is the professor of The University of Tokyo and Cathrine Mihalopoulos, who is the professor of Deakin University in Australia.
Dr. Po-Chang Lee said that during the outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020,the NHI big data and its health information systems played a vital role in containing the covid-19 pandemic in Taiwan.During the COVID-19 pandemic, NHIA works on cross-boundary and integration of resources, optimizes NHI MediCloud system, develops real time alert  system, and understands patients’ TOCC (Travel history, Occupation, Contact history, Cluster). There is also the Name-based mask distribution system, which NHI cards are required to purchase masks. Furthermore, to make quick identification of COVID-19 from chest X-Ray images, NHIA works in collaboration with the research team in Taiwan to develop AI -based chest x-ray pneumonia detection platform for COVID-19 , which enables quick diagnosis for assessing the need for further treatment. In response to the  Level 3 COVID-19 alert , telemedicine is also  available to be used for providing healthcare service.
Furthermore, the NHIA  is planning to expand the function of NHI app and to develop toward a personal health passport.