From March 18 to 22, the Global Research & Industry Alliance (GLORIA) of National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) cooperated with the school’s New Southbound Project Implementation Unit of the Ministry of Education to arrange for corporate members and potential members of the relevant medical equipment market to expand exchange visits with industrial, government, and academic sectors in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The aim was to help these members develop the country’s New Southbound medical equipment market. During that period, GLORIA exchanged views with students at the University of Malaysia (UM) and met with the Medical Device Authority (MDA), Malaysia’s Ministry of Health, the Malaysia Medical Device Association (MMDA), Kumpulan Y.S.P. (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., and several distributors.

NCKU has a deep connection with UM. For many years, scholars from both universities have conducted international research cooperation, academic exchanges, exchange visits, and other activities among teachers, physicians, and students. In 2017, the NCKU-UM Hub was even established at the Industrial Innovation Center of UM, which has since become an advanced base of NCKU’s New Southbound link with Singapore and Malaysia. This time, this base space was also used to allow corporate member representatives to discuss market planning with some local distributors. Furthermore, to enable students of relevant UM departments to understand more about the Taiwanese medical industry and increase opportunities to absorb foreign talents in the future, GLORIA arranged for manufacturer representatives to introduce the R&D strategies and product developments of their companies. The students have shown great interest in the R&D process of Taiwanese manufacturers and provided their contact information to the corporate member representatives after meeting, expressing their willingness to work in Taiwanese enterprises in the future.

MDA was established in accordance with the 2012 Medical Device Management Act, which covers the registration, manufacturing, delivery, import and export licensing of medical equipment, and monitoring the operations and uses of marketed medical equipment. Due to the lack of workforce in MDA, Malaysia has particularly opened up to allow the Conformity Assessment Body (CAB) to review whether manufacturers’ documents comply with the specifications prior to MDA issuing licenses. On the other hand, MMDA needs to include manufacturers who are truly engaged in the medical equipment business. MMDA can make proposal suggestions to MDA on behalf of industrial civil units and assist the Malaysian government in policy promotion and providing members with the latest development information and related content of international conferences in fields related to industrial and medical equipment. Visits to medical equipment-related units has allowed corporate members to have a clearer understanding of the relevant regulations on the sale of medical equipment in Malaysia and other Southeast Asian countries.

In addition to meeting with official units, GLORIA NCKU also arranged its corporate members to meet with a local manufacturer - Kumpulan Y.S.P. (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., one of the leading pharmaceutical manufacturing companies in Malaysia, whose product range covers human medicines, non-prescription drugs, animal and aquatic drugs, etc., as well as medical equipment products at the moment. By discussing the profound cultivation experience of Kumpulan Y.S.P. in Malaysia, the corporate members of GLORIA NCKU hoped that the two sides could cooperate to expand the larger global market.

From visiting AI ​​companies in Silicon Valley in 2018 to this year’s visit to the industry-academia sector of New Southbound countries, GLORIA NCKU continues to assist corporate members and Taiwanese manufacturers with international exchanges. Furthermore, to offer good membership services, it expects to expand Taiwan’s R&D energy and quality products to the foreign markets to achieve global connections.