DATE & TIME:   Wednesday, January 20, 2010, 12:00 – 14:00

In this presentation, Dr. Wu will talk about the advantages of Taiwan’s medical service as a medical tourism destination and introduce the Taiwan Task Force for medical travel. He will also talk about how the task force would cooperate with foreign companies and touch upon the business models of medical tourism.

Taiwan’s late arrival as a medical tourism destination has hindered its growth in this sector but there is still future potential. Tom Griffith will speak about medical tourism from a facilitator’s point of view. He will give an introduction of the medical tourism industry as a whole. He will also give an overview of the future of medical tourism (insurance companies and self-insured employees).

About the speakers

Dr. Ming-Yen Wu got his dental degree at NTU in 1987 and MPH at UCLA in 1989. Dr. Wu worked as the special assistant to CEO, Chang-Gung Memorial Hospital which is the largest hospital chain (the total no. of beds is over 10,000 now) in 1989. Dr. Wu also has served as secretary-general of TNHCA since 1990. He also serves as the assistant professor at Chang-Gung University. His major focus includes healthcare insurance, quality management, physician payment, performance measurement and marketing. Now he is invited as the consultant to Ministry of Health, the Executive Yuan, Taiwan in 2008. He takes charge of planning and coordinating every possible effort to promote the medical travel in Taiwan 2 years ago. Finally, our association got the 3-year big project, through the cooperation of other agencies and 30 participating hospitals and clinics, from DOH to promote the medical travel in Taiwan since 2008.

Tom Griffith is the co-founder of Formosa Medical Travel, Taiwan's first American-owned medical tourism agency. Having signed agreements with three major hospitals in Taiwan in late 2009, Formosa Medical Travel is uniquely positioned to facilitate medical tourism in Taiwan to patients in the English-speaking world. Tom Griffith received his Bachelor of Science in Risk Management from the University of Connecticut and formerly worked for Northwestern Mutual Insurance.