The development of medicine depends on the academic research environment.  The hospital has the most sophisticated research devices and the most innovative research teams, which has long engaged in the field of basic and clinical research. In recent years, with the efforts of staff, many outstanding academic achievements have been manifested.

 

 

Over the past four years, our outstanding achievements in innovation and R&D have been published in world-renowned journals, with the number and quality of our SCI and SSCI papers increasing year by year. The total number of papers published by the hospital's full-time staff rose from 591 in 2013 to 760 in 2016. As the number of papers published increased, the quality of those also improved significantly. From 2013 to 2015, SCI and SSCI papers published by our staff as the first author or corresponding author totaled 1983, with 426 papers with IF>5 or ranked in the top 10 percent of the field, and the average IF value reaching 3.20 times, which surpassed the average Taiwan level (2.75 times) released by the WOS database.

 

The hospital has carried out innovation and R&D projects in the past three years, with the number and funds growing every year. In the fierce competition across the nation, the hospital obtained the Ministry of Health and Welfare's Phase II cancer research program and the program for the promotion of the innovation and competitiveness of clinical trials, with a total of over NT$180 million in three-year funds. One of the few hospitals that have received two programs' subsidies, it came out in front and built the best translational medicine and clinical trial platform in Taiwan. The programs funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology and the National Health Research Institutes have performed successfully in the fields as follows: 1) tumor and immunization: the mechanism of tumor development, metastasis and drug resistance; 2)  neuropsychiatric areas: the mechanism of stroke and brain injury, depression and schizophrenia treatment; 3) clinical diseases: pathogenesis of heredity, heart, liver, and kidney diseases; 4) biomaterials: nanomedicine and nuclear medical imaging; 5) cell therapy: research on stem cells (cancer stem cells, mesenchymal stem cells) and immune cell mechanisms; 6) research and development of traditional Chinese medicine and new drugs, and 7) big data database and precision medicine have outstanding achievements and have contributed considerably to medical treatment.

 

In the past, academic research in Taiwan only put emphasis on "quantity" instead of "quality" and researchers made every effort to publish as many papers as possible, which contributed to the development of Taiwan's early academic research, but also produced shoddy works. Therefore, we must dispel the myth that the more papers the better, boost the quality of the papers, and lead Taiwan to pursue academic excellence.