Promoting Personalized Healthcare in Taiwan The National Health Research Institutes and Roche Sign Memorandum of Understanding

• Memorandum of Understanding is the second partnership by Roche forged to co-create a healthcare system designed for personalized healthcare

• Expanding program of partnerships builds personalized healthcare infrastructure by enabling genomic profiling and expanding patient access to molecularly targeted therapies

Roche (SIX: RO, ROG; OTCQX: RHHBY) today announced that the National Health Research Institutes (NHRI) signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Roche to promote personalized healthcare in Taiwan, with a focus on tailoring cancer treatment to individual patients for the best outcomes. The progress of personalized healthcare is changing with each passing day. Every country in the world is actively investing in personalized healthcare and has listed it as a priority. Strengthening the collaboration between Taiwan’s industry, government, academia and all healthcare stakeholders will be an important key to leading this transformation in healthcare that is required to deliver the very best care for patients.

The memorandum was signed by Kung-Yee Liang, President of the NHRI and Irene Hsu, General Manager of Roche Taiwan, and witnessed by Shih-Chung Chen, Minister of Health and Welfare and Ron Park, Vice President of Personalized Healthcare, Global Product Strategy at Roche. This cooperation represents a joint effort by the Ministry of Health and Welfare, the pharmaceutical industry, and the research institutes to open up new opportunities for personalized healthcare for Taiwan patients.

In contrast to healthcare models of the past, the primary intent of personalized healthcare is to find the appropriate and more effective treatment for individual patients, instead of the traditional “one-size-fits-all” approach. Through the establishment of Taiwan's National Precision Health Initiative with the Ministry of Health and Welfare and NHRI (the mission-oriented and highest medical and health research institution in Taiwan), the hope is to provide patients with personalized healthcare through precise genomic analysis and to reduce unnecessary medical expenses while improving the quality of healthcare. The scope of this memorandum includes Roche and the government investing resources to plan and implement a Demonstration Project, which includes:

• Facilitating national level access to comprehensive genomic profiling for cancer patients

• Establishing a mechanism for personalized treatment so that patients can have access to appropriate drugs for detected genetic mutations

• Establishing and accumulating a national clinico-genomic database that, in addition to  comprehensive medical and genomic data, will include clinical outcome for follow-up analysis, and

• Promoting the use of real-world evidence (results from non-clinical trials) to assist in drug inspection and registration and National Health Insurance reimbursement decisions

“With this Memorandum of Understanding, Taiwan is showing leadership to create an example of  the future of personalized healthcare for cancer patients,” said Ron Park, Vice President and Global Lead of Personalised Healthcare, Global Product Strategy, at Roche. “As partners, we have a shared mission to achieve better care for patients, and this Demonstration Project program demonstrates our joint commitment to build a healthcare environment in Taiwan that benefits patients, doctors and the entire system.”

"As a partner in healthcare, I am very pleased to see that the Taiwan government is forward-looking and has made personalized healthcare a priority to benefit cancer patients, medical service providers, and the entire healthcare system, as well as to contribute to the research and development of the biotechnology industry,” Irene Hsu, General Manager of Roche Taiwan, expressed, “Roche will actively cooperate with the Ministry of Health and Welfare and the NHRI to carry out the above-mentioned substantive cooperation.”

Healthcare is on the cusp of a major transformation. Roche believes progress will be accelerated by the ability to understand and interpret unprecedented volumes of data, which allows for a higher resolution view of each individual patient and puts the promise of truly personalised healthcare within reach.

Roche is committed to delivering on this opportunity in a way that creates meaningful value for patients and healthcare systems, and the company is drawing on a unique combination of strengths to drive this transformation: a leading portfolio of medicines, expertise in medicine, biology and data-science, world-leading companies (Flatiron and Foundation Medicine), a network of partnerships and global reach. Roche is accessing meaningful data at scale and applying advanced analytics to ask the most important questions in science and healthcare.  

• Patients are provided with genomic testing to identify mutations underlying their tumor, thus allowing physicians to make more accurate diagnosis and targeted therapy decisions.

• Doctors are enabled to choose appropriate therapies, based on the molecular biology of the tumor, further improving our understanding of disease diversity and subtypes

• Regulators are enabled to make timely and better informed decisions on new and additional indications for existing evidence-based therapies

• Reimbursement of the most effective and efficient medicines is made possible, based on the use of real world data and real world outcomes

RWD denotes data relating to patient health, which is collected as part of routine healthcare practice instead of data generated through conventional clinical trials in dedicated research settings. RWD enables us to go beyond forming causal conclusions between intervention and effect, by providing a potentially rich and underutilised insight into how approved diagnostics and medicines affect patient outcomes.

*Visitto access and read Roche’s Position on Access to & Use of RWD in full.

Roche is a global pioneer in pharmaceuticals and diagnostics focused on advancing science to improve people’s lives. The combined strengths of pharmaceuticals and diagnostics under one roof have made Roche the leader in personalised healthcare – a strategy that aims to fit the right treatment to each patient in the best way possible.

Roche is the world’s largest biotech company, with truly differentiated medicines in oncology, immunology, infectious diseases, ophthalmology and diseases of the central nervous system. Roche is also a world leader in in vitro diagnostics and tissue-based cancer diagnostics, and a frontrunner in diabetes management. 

Founded in 1896, Roche continues to search for better ways to prevent, diagnose and treat diseases and make a sustainable contribution to society. The company also aims to improve patient access to medical innovations by working with all relevant stakeholders. More than thirty medicines developed by Roche are included in the World Health Organization Model Lists of Essential Medicines, among them life-saving antibiotics, antimalarial and cancer medicines. Moreover, for the tenth consecutive year, Roche has been recognized as the most sustainable company in the Pharmaceuticals Industry by the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices (DJSI).

The Roche Group, headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, is active in over 100 countries and in 2018 employed about 94,000 people worldwide. In 2018, Roche invested CHF 11 billion in R&D and posted sales of CHF 56.8 billion. Genentech, in the United States, is a wholly owned member of the Roche Group. Roche is the majority shareholder in Chugai Pharmaceutical, Japan. For more information, please visit
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