- Kaohsiung Medical University Chung-Ho Memorial Hospital-

Healthcare can now truly “cross mountains and seas.” Kaohsiung Medical University Chung-Ho Memorial Hospital (KMUH) has reached a new international milestone in smart healthcare by becoming the first healthcare institution in the Asia-Pacific region and the third in the world to receive the Telehealth accreditation from Joint Commission International (JCI). KMUH is also the first healthcare institution in Taiwan to achieve this internationally recognized accreditation.

From remote health centers and emergency consultations to patients’ homes, KMUH has leveraged years of experience in telehealth to align its services with international quality standards. By overcoming geographical barriers, KMUH is extending the expertise and resources of a medical center to communities where they are needed most. This accreditation not only represents international recognition of KMUH’s achievements in smart healthcare, but also demonstrates its commitment to the “Healthy Taiwan” initiative by using technology to advance healthcare equity and strengthen patient safety.

Superintendent Jaw-Yuan Wang said that, as a university-affiliated medical center, KMUH has been committed to fulfilling its social responsibility by providing healthcare services in underserved and rural areas for more than 20 years. From Namasia, Taoyuan, and Maolin in Kaohsiung to its collaboration with the Taitung County Government, KMUH has continuously extended the expertise and resources of a medical center to areas with relatively limited access to healthcare.

To overcome geographical and transportation challenges in rural communities, KMUH has gradually developed a comprehensive telehealth platform and integrated 5G communication technology, enabling medical expertise to be transmitted and consultations to be conducted in real time. In this way, KMUH is making the concept of “healthcare without geographical boundaries” a reality.

Becoming the first healthcare institution in the Asia-Pacific region to receive JCI Telehealth accreditation is the result of a hospital-wide, multidisciplinary effort. Clinical teams, information technology specialists, quality management professionals, and administrative units worked closely together to build upon KMUH’s established foundation of healthcare quality and develop a telehealth governance framework aligned with international standards. This ensures that patients receiving care remotely can enjoy the same level of quality and safety as those receiving care in person at the hospital.

Since 2008, KMUH has operated the Telehealth Care Center, the only year-round, 24-hour telehealth service center in southern Taiwan. The center continuously monitors patients’ physiological data at home and, when abnormalities are detected, initiates standardized risk stratification and management procedures. Depending on the patient’s condition, the team may arrange outpatient follow-up, referral back to the hospital, or emergency response measures.

Its services cover a range of specialized programs, including high-risk pregnancy, cardiovascular disease, chronic disease management, and post-discharge follow-up. Rather than replacing clinical physicians, this smart healthcare hub systematically organizes information collected outside the hospital and feeds it back to each patient’s existing medical team, ensuring continuity of care. This approach embodies KMUH’s telehealth governance principles of identifying risks, responding to abnormalities, reconnecting patients with clinical care, and continuously improving care quality.

In rural healthcare, KMUH has partnered with nine township health centers in Taitung County, bringing together specialists in otolaryngology, dermatology, and ophthalmology. Eight telehealth outpatient sessions are conducted each week, allowing residents of Dawu Township and surrounding rural and offshore-island communities to receive medical-center-level specialist care without the need for long-distance travel.

Using FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) for healthcare information exchange, consultation results can be securely transmitted to local health centers, ensuring information security, complete medical records, and traceability. Local healthcare professionals assist with patient identification, physiological measurements, and image acquisition, while KMUH specialists review the information remotely through a cloud-based system and provide diagnostic assessments and treatment recommendations. This creates a closely integrated model of cross-institutional and cross-regional collaboration.

KMUH has also expanded telehealth into emergency and critical care through “E-Link,” a smart cloud-based emergency care network. The platform connects KMUH Gangshan Hospital, KMUH Cijin Hospital, KMUH Siaogang Hospital, Ministry of Health and Welfare Qishan Hospital, Ministry of Health and Welfare Pingtung Hospital, as well as health centers in Maolin and Dawu, establishing a regional network for coordinated emergency and critical care.

Partnering institutions can initiate a remote consultation with a single click. KMUH can simultaneously access patients’ medical records, medical images, and physiological monitoring data, allowing specialists to promptly determine whether patients can continue treatment at the referring facility or require transfer to a medical center.

When transfer is necessary, KMUH can activate priority pathways for blood preparation, bed allocation, operating room access, and cardiac catheterization procedures in advance. This enables the receiving medical team to complete preparations before the patient arrives, helping ensure that every critical minute is used effectively in the treatment of emergency and critically ill patients.

In addition to outpatient and emergency services, KMUH has implemented an Acute Care at Home (ACAH) program. Under a hospital-substitution model, patients with acute conditions such as pneumonia, urinary tract infections, and soft-tissue infections can receive appropriate treatment at home. Eligible patients include individuals already receiving home healthcare, residents of long-term care facilities, and patients presenting to emergency departments.

The care team provides home-based diagnostic testing, including point-of-care testing and ultrasound examinations, medication prescribing and dispensing, health management, and connections to long-term care resources. A comprehensive emergency transfer pathway is also in place to safeguard patients throughout home-based treatment.

The program integrates telehealth video consultations with first-person-view smart glasses, enabling care teams to assess conditions in the home environment in real time. In addition, a 24-hour virtual nursing station continuously transmits patients’ vital signs from the bedside to the Telehealth Care Center, supporting around-the-clock monitoring and uninterrupted care.

Deputy Superintendent Tsung-Hsien Lin said that KMUH’s telehealth specialist outpatient and consultation services had served more than 14,900 patient visits as of the end of June 2026. Since the introduction of 5G-enabled telehealth specialist consultations in rural areas in 2020, the service had reached 3,254 consultations by 2025, extending medical-center-level specialist resources to local health centers.

Looking ahead, KMUH will continue investing in telehealth resources while complying with relevant regulations and strengthening applications such as AI-assisted diagnosis and integrated health data analytics. By combining the expertise of a medical center with quality management based on international accreditation standards, KMUH aims to provide more people in underserved communities with healthcare that is safe, accessible, convenient, and aligned with international standards.

JCI is one of the world’s most authoritative healthcare accreditation organizations. Its standards cover multiple dimensions of healthcare delivery, including patient safety, quality of care, information management, and organizational governance, and are widely regarded as a global benchmark for healthcare quality.

As demand for telehealth has grown rapidly in recent years, JCI has established dedicated standards addressing key aspects of remote healthcare delivery, including privacy protection, workflow protocols, information security, patient identification, and continuity of care.

KMUH’s successful accreditation demonstrates that, building upon its existing healthcare services, the hospital has achieved internationally recognized standards across critical areas including information system security, telehealth outpatient and emergency consultation workflows, acute care at home, and 24-hour remote physiological monitoring.

Through these efforts, KMUH is transforming smart healthcare into a powerful force for patient safety and turning its commitment—“Wherever there is a need, KMUH will be there”—into action. At the same time, KMUH is contributing to a more resilient healthcare network for “Healthy Taiwan.”

▲Dr. Yu-Cheng Chang of the Department of Ophthalmology at KMUH conducts a telehealth consultation, remotely reviewing fundus images in real time and providing diagnostic and treatment recommendations.

▲The KMUH telehealth care team undergoes the JCI Telehealth international accreditation assessment.

▲Nurses at the Telehealth Care Center conduct 24-hour physiological monitoring and health consultations. Through the information platform, they monitor patients’ health status in real time and assess, contact, and arrange follow-up care when abnormal alerts are detected.