Despite its modest market size, Taiwan is proving a popular investment destination for pharma and medtech multinationals. While the island’s semiconductor industry garners more headlines and revenues, life sciences is also growing as an investment sector. Taiwan is frequently near the front of the queue within APAC for new product launches and global life science companies are enamoured with the island’s combination of scale and manageability.
Indeed, 90 percent of AmCham Taiwan’s member companies wanted to maintain or increase their investment when surveyed last year. “The biggest challenge for our members is not, as most people assume, cross-strait issues, but energy stability and predictability,” says AmCham President Carl Wegner.
“The national healthcare system has operated for decades, creating a data environment that is both comprehensive and reliable,” says Wegner. “This represents one of the best opportunities globally for pharmaceutical companies, whether for selling products, conducting trials, or leveraging real-world evidence.” Broader strengths include regulatory predictability, clinical excellence, reimbursement upgrades, proximity to other top APAC markets, and IP protection.
Location is also key. “Taiwan sits near several of the region’s largest and fastest-growing markets which gives it a strategic role as a reference market and a bridge for clinical expertise into neighbouring markets,” explains Dan Silver, general manager Taiwan and APAC senior commercial director at medtech giant Boston Scientific. He adds that, “Taiwan’s predictability, high clinical standards and reimbursement structure make it especially attractive as a regional anchor.”
For Boston Scientific, these factors led to Taiwan becoming one of the first APAC markets to launch its pulsed field ablation (PFA) technology in electrophysiology. “Our Taiwan team recognised the potential early, supported clinical investigations, and worked closely with physicians and relevant authorities to rapidly launch PFA here,” notes Silver. “That blend of foresight, investment and local execution is a good representation of what drove our growth.”
It is a similar story within pharma. Over at MSD, the opportunities in Taiwan cut across almost its entire portfolio, from oncology drugs to HPV vaccines, with institutional reform further strengthening Taiwan’s investment potential as an early-launch market. “Increasingly, the previously siloed Taiwan FDA (regulatory affairs authority) and NHIA (reimbursement authority) are now collaborating meaningfully,” explains Vincent Tong, the company’s former managing director. “When preparing regulatory submissions, you can simultaneously inform the NHIA that approval is forthcoming, enabling certain concurrent application processes.”
A spirit of openness to innovation even extends to costly, personalised, and complex cell and gene therapies. As Cathy Su, general manager of Gilead Sciences in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and Singapore, points out, “In Taiwan, we anticipate receiving regulatory approval for our cell therapy imminently, with reimbursement progress also advancing expeditiously. Taiwan’s government are demonstrating a keen interest in introducing additional therapy options.”
All in all, with a physician-president prioritising healthcare, including nationwide screening programmes, under the ‘Healthy Taiwan’ banner (discussed in detail elsewhere in this report), multinational affiliate leaders speak glowingly of their ability to place long-term bets in the Taiwan market.
“Taiwan has been an important partner for Biogen since 2017,” notes Sabrina Zimmerman, the company’s general manager for Taiwan, Hong Kong & Macau as well as its APAC portfolio head. “It was an early adopter of newborn screening programmes, which enabled early identification of infants and rapid initiation of therapy. The impact has been substantial: data published five years after implementation show that children with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) – who in the past might not have survived early childhood – are now achieving near-normal development.”
She adds, “Taiwan’s progress in newborn screening and early intervention for SMA illustrates what is achievable when clinical expertise, policy focus, and public health priorities are aligned.”
This is not to say that Taiwan is without flaws as an investment destination for life science companies. Perhaps most importantly, healthcare spending at under eight percent of GDP is below the OECD average, which – as Silver points out – leads to “the value determined by clinical science not always being reflected in pricing. This gap between the outcomes we deliver and how the system recognises that value is a persistent challenge, driven by the overall pressure to reduce healthcare expenditures.”
Nevertheless, for those firms willing to demonstrate value and work collaboratively with governmental stakeholders, the opportunities for success are certainly present. As Wegner concludes, “Taiwan remains very open to investment. It is welcoming and opportunity-rich.”
