NEWS Vietnam

University of Medicine and Pharmacy at Ho Chi Minh City (UMP) and the National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) are long-term partners. The partnership grew stronger especially after the NCKU inaugurated an overseas Hub in Vietnam in UMP’s campus. With the aim to further deepen the international research cooperation between UMP and NCKU, the two Universities jointly launch the 2021 UMP-NCKU Joint Research Program to encourage outstanding researchers to integrate international academic resources for solving regional issues and challenges and to share the cross-national research achievements through international journals. 5 selected projects by NCKU and UMP in 2021 showed in the table below.

Table 1: The five selected projects

With the goal of sharing the core of knowledge in interdisciplinary research in Medical fields, the NCKU Overseas Hub in Vietnam (NCKU OH) cooperates with the 5 Joint research groups of the UMP and NCKU to organize the series Online Webinars with the interdisciplinary topics in Healthcare management field.

          Table 2: The series Webinars

Amazingly, this Event attracted 192 pre-registered from many countries over the world such as Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan, Philippines, etc. with many different occupations as Students, University Staff, University Faculty, Industry and Government. This is such a huge number.

Participant’s occupations

Students took the highest proportion of participants (46%) while the people belonging from the University staff, Industry and Government had been recorded as a considerable amount (23%, 7%, and 3%, respectively).

Speakers of series Webinars

The media support on the social network: UMP International Relations Office

On August 19^th, Prof. Che-Wei Lin and Prof. Pham Le An introduced their projects in the Webinar “2021 Internatonal Webinar series on Smart Healthcare Science and Technology”. Prof. Lin and Prof. An mentioned the aims of their studies in developing a portable real-time screen device for foot ulcer using an E-nose and artificial intelligence algorithm. Four research sub-topics are included, the research sub-topic (I) is to establish the E-nose sensing system for smell data collection. In the research sub-topic (II), the research group will collect the smells of Haemophilus influenzae, Mycoplasma pneumoniae, Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus pneumoniae, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Rhinoviruses, Coronaviruses, Influenza virus, Adenovirus, Parainfluenza in Extro Vivo form. In research topic (III), they will collect the smell from patients' breath and saliva. Finally, a machine learning-based algorithm will be used to discriminate the smells from patients who suffer from respiratory tract infection and normal subjects.

Prof. Che-Wei Lin introduced the Lean mode in Prof. Lin’s study

Following the series Webinar is the topic: “Healthcare Innovation – Machine learning and IoT application in patient care” from 3 Speakers: Dr. Chun-Yin Yeh, Prof. Trang Dang and Prof. Ping-Yen Liu on Sept 13^th. The Joint research group showed the current results in their study that use L1 regularization logistic regression. Fifteen features taken as input data of model, and were utilized to predict (1) which bacteria group the patient belongs to (2) whether the patient is resistant for Amikacin when the bacteria group retain one of these groups, such as Acinetobacter spp., Escherichia coli, Gram negative, Klebsiella spp., Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Staphylococcus spp., and Staphylococcus aureus. Amikacin is an antibiotic medication that is commonly used for several bacterial infections.

Dr. Nguyen Quoc Hoa introduced about the research progress of their groups

Prof. Dang Nguyen Doan Trang shared the speech “Empirical antibiotic therapy and resistance at UMC HCMC

On Sept 27^th, the research groups that included Prof. Ching-Hsia Hung and Dr. Bui Diem Khue introduced the Webinar with the topic: “Design App for OSA Patient”. Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a sleep-breathing disorder that affects 7-24% of the adult population.

The introduction about the overview of Obstructive Sleep Apnea from Prof. Ching-Hsia Hung and Dr. Bui Diem Khue

The Webinar on October 28^th started with the presentation about: “Single cell heterogeneous analysis of oral cancer oncogenic crux” by Prof. Tze-Ta Huang and “Oral cancer status in Vietnam” by Dr. Nguyen Thi Kim Chi. The goal of the their joint research group is to examine the changes in the cell population during the malignant transformation from normal oral mucosa, oral precancerous lesions, to Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma (OSCC).

The speech of Prof. Tze-Ta Huang about “Single cell heterogeneous analysis of oral cancer oncogenic crux”

The speech with the topic: “Oral cancer status in Vietnam” by Dr. Nguyen Thi Kim Chi

In the afternoon of October 28^th, the Webinar with the topic “Seafood allergy – when Taiwan meets Vietnam” was instructed by Dr. Trinh Hoang Kim Tu and Dr. Ching-Wei Lin. Food allergy (FA) remains a major issue given its popularity and severity, in which seafood is a major cause of FA and anaphylaxis worldwide. It is estimated that 2.5% of the world’s population has experienced any adverse reaction to seafood. Seafood refers to several distinct groups of edible aquatic animals including fish, crustaceans, and mollusks.

The overview of Seafood allergy in Southern Taiwan and Vietnam was presented by Dr. Ching-Wei Lin and Dr. Trinh Hoang Kim Tu

Some outstanding results of the series Webinars:

• Vietnam Hub got the huge attention from viewers and participants in both Cisco Webex platform and FB page;
• The event attracted almost 3000 viewers On Cisco Webex and FB. The highest number of the viewer on FB come from South East Asia and Asia such as Vietnam, Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, etc. Moreover, this event also received a lot support from the viewers who were from the other side of the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Ghana, Australia, France, etc.
• Updated and sharing the research results in Healthcare management fields;
• Created a virtual platform to integrate international academic resources for solving regional issues and to share the cross-national research achievements.

The group photo of the series Webinars

Viewer’s countries from FB and Cisco