Photo: AI-generated using the GPT-5.5 Model
For the 10th consecutive year, Taiwan has been excluded from meaningful participation in the World Health Assembly (WHA). This is a practical loss for global public health.
The world does not need another abstract debate about whether Taiwan can help. It already does. A more pressing question is why the international community continues to keep a technologically advanced health partner outside the room, given that the future of public health increasingly depends on connectivity, artificial intelligence, and digital resilience.
Public health is a global public good. Infectious diseases cross borders. Aging societies face similar pressures. Chronic illnesses drain productivity everywhere. Health systems wealthy and developing countries alike are struggling with staff shortages, rising costs, and fragmented data. In this environment, excluding Taiwan is not just unfair. It is inefficient.
The World Health Organization (WHO) itself has recognized the importance of digital transformation. Its Global Strategy on Digital Health calls for the use of digital technologies to strengthen health systems and improve health for all. The Global Initiative on Digital Health, launched with India’s G20 presidency, similarly focuses on helping countries use digital tools in interoperable, sustainable, and rights-respecting ways. The logic is clear: Health protection now depends not only on hospitals and vaccines, but also on information systems that allow care to be delivered faster, smarter, and more equitably.
Taiwan has relevant experience. Its strengths in semiconductors, information and communications technology, and medical innovation have created a natural base for smart healthcare. Taipei Medical University’s healthcare system, for example, has showcased AI-supported tools for elderly care, cognitive training, and imaging-based disease prediction, including systems that analyze MRI and CT images to detect dementia and assess lung-related risks. This is not science fiction. It is the practical convergence of Taiwan’s medical system and its technology ecosystem.
Furthermore Taiwan’s contribution is not limited to laboratories or hospitals at home.
In Paraguay, Taiwan has supported health digitization as part of a broader bilateral partnership. The goal is simple but transformative: move public health systems away from paper-based fragmentation toward interoperable digital recordsand higher-quality service delivery. Paraguay has reported substantial progress in national health information system coverage, with Taiwan’s support helping connect public facilities and expand digital capacity.
In Fiji, Taiwan’s cooperation has shown what digital health can mean at the community level. The Sova Ni Bula platform, developed in partnership with local health authorities and international partners, digitized noncommunicable disease case management in several health centers, supporting real-time data sharing and continuity of care. According to project materials, the system digitized more than 11,000 patient records, supported thousands of patient visits, and sharply reduced data-processing time.
These examples matter because they show that digital health is not only about expensive machines in elite hospitals. It is about whether a nurse can access reliable patient information, whether a rural clinic can track chronic disease, whether public officials can see where resources are needed, and whether health systems can shift from reacting late to intervening early.
That is also why the economic argument matters.
Health spending is often treated as a cost. Properly designed, digital health turns part of that cost into productive infrastructure. Better information systems can reduce duplication, shorten administrative work, improve disease monitoring, and support more efficient allocation of staff and supplies. AI-enabled tools can assist screening, triage, and follow-up, especially where specialists are scarce. Telemedicine can reduce travel burdens and keep people connected to care before conditions worsen.
These are not only health gains; they are productivity gains.
A worker who receives earlier treatment misses fewer days. A caregiver who can rely on remote monitoring carries a lighter burden. A clinic that spends less time processing paperwork can spend more time treating patients. Start-ups that develop health AI, medical devices, and secure data systems can create new industries. In other words, health innovation is also an economic policy.
This point is especially important for developing countries and small island states. Digital tools cannot replace doctors, nurses, or sustained public investment. They are not magic. Poorly designed systems can create new inequalities, data risks, and wasted spending. However, when implemented with local ownership, training, and interoperability, these technologies can help countries stretch limited resources and build more resilient health systems.
Taiwan has experience worth sharing precisely because it sits at the intersection of these challenges. It is an aging society, a technology powerhouse, a democracy with strong public health capacity, and a development partner that is already working with countries in Latin America, the Pacific, and Asia. Its New Southbound Policy has also made medical cooperation one of the channels through which Taiwan deepens people-centered ties with Southeast Asia and South Asia.
Keeping Taiwan out of the WHA, therefore, does not punish Taiwan alone. It weakens knowledge exchange at a moment when global health needs more, not fewer, capable contributors.
The argument for Taiwan’s meaningful participation should not rest only on sympathy. It should rest on interests. Member states of the WHO need better disease surveillance, more resilient health systems, practical digital-health experience, and trusted technology partners. Taiwan can contribute in all of these areas.
This year’s exclusion should be treated as more than another annual ritual of diplomatic frustration. It should be a reminder that politicizing health governance carries costs. The international community cannot say it wants Health for All while excluding a society of 23 million people that has both health expertise and technologies to share.
Taiwan’s participation in the WHA would not solve every global health problem. But it would make the international system smarter, more capable, and more honest about the realities of 21st-century public health.
If health is truly a global public good, Taiwan should not be left outside the system that claims to protect it.