MacKay and Tri-Service General Hospitals Name First Winners of Taiwan's T+ MedIC Medical Innovation Accelerator

AI-assisted ECG interpretation and a multimodal preventive screening platform take top honors among 14 finalist teams

TAIPEI, Nov. 13, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- An AI tool that helps clinicians read electrocardiograms and a screening platform that pairs low-dose chest CT with artificial intelligence won the top prizes at the first final round of the T+ MedIC Accelerator, a health-tech accelerator that brings together a private and a public medical center in Taiwan.

The accelerator (T+ MedIC Accelerator,)  was founded by MacKay Memorial Hospital and Tri-Service General Hospital (TSGH), in partnership with the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI). It held its inaugural final competition and awards ceremony on Nov. 2 at MacKay Memorial Hospital in Taipei. Fourteen teams, seven in each of two tracks, pitched solutions spanning clinical decision support, nursing workflows, health monitoring and mobility assistance.

The incubation track is open to teams that have not yet incorporated and whose core members work at the organizing hospitals or their affiliated institutions. The startup acceleration track is for startups founded within the past eight years or in-house biomedical ventures of larger organizations.

Incubation track: AI-assisted ECG reading takes top prize

The top prize went to Xindian Zhiyi, a Tri-Service General Hospital team that uses AI to assist electrocardiogram analysis and interpretation, with the goal of improving disease detection and clinical decision-making.

Two teams shared second place. MacKay Memorial Hospital's Department of Digital Medicine won for a bone-age AI interpretation system that compares cases against real patient images and has already been used clinically more than 1,500 times. A second Tri-Service team developed a dedicated connector for chemotherapy delivered through a urinary catheter, designed to make the procedure safer to handle and to reduce health care workers' exposure to chemotherapy drugs.

Startup track: every winner targets early detection

DeepRad.AI took first place with a multimodal preventive screening platform that combines low-dose chest CT with AI to assess lung, cardiovascular and bone health risks at the same time.

Second place went to FUTUREMED PreCancer, which applies liquid biopsy to explore ultra-early cancer screening. Third place went to Tri-Service General Hospital's Digital Medical Center for an AI-enhanced chest X-ray tool that screens lung function non-invasively and supports clinical decisions. According to the organizers, the team has a development track record tied to three software-as-a-medical-device (SaMD) licenses from Taiwan's Food and Drug Administration (TFDA).

The other finalists were SonoMedic, an AI smart nursing cart control system, a MacKay sepsis team and OR-LLM in the incubation track, and exebrain, GaitRich, Ebot Robotics and Rest Guard in the startup track.

"Only the starting point"

Hospital leaders framed the event around getting new tools into everyday clinical use.

Dr. Wu Chia-chao, deputy superintendent of Tri-Service General Hospital, said the two hospitals' large clinical caseloads and expertise, combined through cross-hospital collaboration, can speed up the validation and real-world adoption of new technologies.

Dr. Hung Ta-chuan, deputy superintendent of MacKay Memorial Hospital, said the accelerator has three goals: integrating expertise and resources, turning technical breakthroughs into clinical practice, and building patent strategies that lead to commercialization. The aim, he said, is for new solutions to become part of routine care and standard operating procedures.

Dr. Chen Yu-jen, another MacKay deputy superintendent who attended the awards, said the teams' work left him with "the startup spirit" and that he had "gained a great deal" from the day. Winning, he stressed, is only the starting point. Moving a medical innovation from an idea to clinical use and a viable business takes joint effort from industry, government, academia and research institutes, along with an accelerator that pulls expertise, resources and partners together.

ITRI said medical innovation has to answer real needs in patient care and hospital management, not just achieve technical breakthroughs. The accelerator pairs the hospitals' clinical expertise with ITRI's experience in industry linkage and commercialization support, helping teams pinpoint clinical pain points, plan validation and product development, and connect with industry partners.

What comes next

Under the program timeline, winning teams enter a mentoring phase starting Nov. 3. Under the competition rules, the top three teams in each track may also receive proposals for hospital collaboration and additional accelerator support. The organizers plan to invite more medical institutions to join, broadening cooperation across Taiwan's public and private health systems and building a path from identifying clinical needs through validation to commercialization, with the aim of developing internationally competitive medical startups.

About T+ MedIC Accelerator T+ MedIC Accelerator was founded by MacKay Memorial Hospital and Tri-Service General Hospital, in partnership with the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), to connect Taiwan's public and private hospitals and match clinical needs with new technologies. Through a two-track selection and mentoring program, it helps medical startups validate their technologies and move them into clinical use. Learn more at https://twmedica.com.