On 30 October 2015, the Taiwan Food and Drug Administration (TFDA) released a UDI Administrative Guidance (including subsequent relevant regulations on the Medicine Traceability System in 2016), proposing to establish a common system for medical product identification.

In the past years, GS1 Chinese Taipei with Taiwan FDA’s support has been leading the work of the Taiwan UDI research projects by proactively working with other key healthcare stakeholders. This is an important step for GS1 Chinese Taipei and for Taiwan’s Health industry in upgrading Taiwan’s domestic healthcare management.

To accelerate the next phase of Taiwan’s UDI project, on 11 April 2017 GS1 Chinese Taipei organised the “GS1 AIDC Healthcare Management Forum 2017”. The event aimed to engage public and private hospitals as well as their suppliers of medical devices, and saw the participation of around 400 attendees. Speakers included representatives from Taiwan’s domestic hospitals (MacKay Memorial Hospital and Lotung Poh-Ai Hospital), Tania Snioch from GS1 Global Office, Japan’s Second Red Cross Hospital in Kyoto and Srinagarind Hospital from Thailand who shared their experiences in the application of GS1 standards, Soo Suk Park from 1WorldSync and Jan Poon from Philips.

Organisations in Taiwan’s healthcare industry should begin to look into establishing their own UDI management system now. Even though the compliance date may be years off, in reality it is just around the corner.

For additional information, please contact christy.chen@gs1tw.org at the GS1 Chinese Taipei UDI Help Desk.