Following the "We Innovators Partners and Funds" initiative announced by the National Innovation Award and backed by three Taiwanese financial holding groups and Realtek Semiconductor Corp, more technology companies have joined the list of investors, including Inventec Corp and display maker AUO Corp. The partnership with the IT giants will be revealed in the National Innovation Award awards ceremony on 27 December.
RBMP, an organisation which facilitates startup incubation and entrepreneurship in the biomedical and healthcare sectors, has been mentoring early-stage start-ups and teams with technologies in development since 2008, providing guidance and connecting them with industry influencers and investors. Over the past 15 years, the National Innovation Award has reviewed more than 2,500 cases and attracted those with commercial potential to apply. To date, the Award has helped 165 companies successfully enter the market and raise nearly NT$23.3 billion, including NT$10 billion in angel round and seed funding; 12 have been listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange with a valuation of nearly NT$150 billion, which has become a fundraising indicator for Taiwanese biomedical startups.
In addition to announcing the new investors, the ceremony will honour the National Innovation Award winners, including ASUSTek, InnoCare Optoelectronics Corp. AI, Merck KGaA, Enimmune Corp. and Moderna Taiwan, with trophies and certificates of merit, followed by debuts made by award-winning Asia Pathogenomics, Alpha Intelligence Manifolds, Inc. (AIM), AeproMED Innovation Corp. Ltd., PlasmonicTron and the other three companies.
These include Onyx Healthcare's artificial intelligence medical imaging computing platform for surgical robots, which not only increases the accuracy of incisions and minimises wounds, but also uses the latest graphics cards and processors, with a 50% increase in CPU performance and a significant increase in AI computing power. For infections where pathogens are still difficult to identify, Asia Pathogenomics' APGseq can detect tens of thousands of cross-species pathogens in a single run, increasing pathogen detection rates by 62% and providing a rapid test report within 48-72 hours.
For osteoporosis, degenerative arthritis and chronic cardiovascular diseases, which are common in an ageing society, AIM's "AI Disease Diagnosis Assistance SaaS Service", which uses AI to generate a personalised analysis report in just one minute, will be presented at the event.
