While Taiwan may be a relatively small country with a paltry population of 23.5 million citizens, it has continued to emerge as a technological powerhouse since the 1980s.
At the heart of this is the nation’s proactive approach to developing emerging technologies, with the World Economic Forum report suggesting that the country is actually in the midst of an innovation-driven economy.
In this post, we’ll look at how Taiwan’s tech-driven approach has helped the country during the Covid-19 outbreak while appraising the impact of Industry 4.0 and other technologies.
How Tech Helped Taiwan to Tackle Coronavirus
There’s no doubt that Taiwan has been hailed as a great example of how to restrict the spread of Covid-19, with this more important than ever as the threat of a second strike remains prominent across the globe.
Of course, this can be partially attributed to the nation’s experience of the 2003 SARS outbreak, but the country also benefited from the timely implementation of timely tech initiatives.
More specifically, Taiwan developed its existing surveillance and screen systems (including infrared thermal imaging scanning) and ensured that these are present at all major airports and borders, in a bid to screen for symptoms of the virus on a mass-scale and leverage a big data approach to tackling the pandemic.
This undoubtedly played a pivotal role in minimizing the spread of coronavirus, while creating another application for big data outside of predictive financial modelling and forex trading.
Why the Industry 4.0 Ecosystem is at the Heart of Taiwan’s Tech Revolution
Historically, Taiwan has built its technological success on being a hub for semiconductor manufacturing, attracting steady investment from chipmakers across the globe.
This remains true to this day, with the island nation currently responsible for about 25% to 30% of integrated circuits (ICs) produced across the globe.
However, the emergence of Industry 4.0 has also played a pivotal role in Taiwan’s more recent tech growth, with this term representing how modern industrial processes leverage smart technologies such as big data and AI successfully.
Make no mistake; few nations have been as successful and harnessing these interconnected technologies, while Taiwan has continued to blaze a trail for others to follow when building the modern Industry 4.0 ecosystem.
This is borne out by the robust artificial intelligence (AI) market in Taiwan, which has benefitted from sustained investment from a raft of global brands including IBM, Microsoft, and Google.
Such investment has followed the intention of these firms to develop AI-centric initiatives in the leading Taiwanese cities, with this likely to shape the global market as it develops in the near and medium-term.