An interdisciplinary student team from the Sports Science and Athletic Rehabilitation Researches Center at Taiwan Tech, advised by Professors Yi-Jia Lin and Wei-Chun Hsu, won the Gold Award at the “Power Up! MEAN WELL Intelligent Sustainability Technology Competition”, jointly organized by MEAN WELL Enterprises Co., Ltd. and National Taipei University of Technology. The award-winning team comprised graduate students from Graduate Institute of Biomedical Engineering Min-Yen Tsai (team leader) and Yu-Wei Chung, together with graduate students from Graduate Institute of Automation and Control Yung-Hsiang Chuang and Ping-Sen Chuang. Their project, “SustainaMed: Smart Healthcare Energy Station”, stood out among more than 250 submissions from related departments across Taiwan and over 120 interdisciplinary teams from multiple universities. The team received the competition's highest honor along with a cash prize of NT$400,000, demonstrating Taiwan Tech's strengths in smart healthcare, emergency medical support, renewable energy integration, and interdisciplinary system development.

Professors Yi-Jia Lin and Wei-Chun Hsu from the Sports Science and Athletic Rehabilitation Researches Center led the interdisciplinary student team to win the Gold Award at the “Power Up! MEAN WELL Intelligent Sustainability Technology Competition”, along with a cash prize of NT$400,000.

This year's competition focused on intelligent technology, sustainable energy, and social applications, encouraging students to develop innovative solutions with both practical value and societal impact through interdisciplinary collaboration. Over the course of eight months, participating teams completed system planning, functional integration, and project demonstrations. Ultimately, 13 teams advanced to the final exhibition.

The Taiwan Tech team's project, “SustainaMed: Smart Healthcare Energy Station”, was designed around the concepts of disaster medical response and smart healthcare for rural communities. Integrating renewable energy, health monitoring, intelligent control, and emergency medical support, the system creates a resilient healthcare platform capable of operating independently from conventional power sources. The project addresses challenges posed by an aging society, limited healthcare resources in remote areas, and power outages or medical service disruptions during natural disasters. Through technological integration, the team aims to enhance public health services and strengthen emergency response capabilities.

MEAN WELL Chairman Chih-Te Cheng (left) presents the Gold Award to Professor Yi-Jia Lin (right), recognizing the Taiwan Tech team's successful integration of smart healthcare, emergency medical support, and sustainable energy technologies.

Team leader Min-Yen Tsai explained that the system utilizes a solar-powered energy generation and storage architecture, allowing continuous operation even during power outages or in locations without reliable electricity. Combined with physiological monitoring and cloud-based data integration, the platform provides real-time health information and remote monitoring capabilities. When abnormal physiological conditions are detected, the system can issue alerts and provide first-aid guidance to assist responders in delivering timely emergency care, thereby improving the chances of successful rescue during the critical “golden hour”.

Team leader Min-Yen Tsai presents the functions and real-world applications of the “SustainaMed: Smart Healthcare Energy Station” to judges and industry representatives during the project exhibition.

Unlike conventional health-monitoring devices, the Smart Healthcare Energy Station emphasizes the integration of intelligent healthcare services with emergency medical support. Rather than functioning as a health-monitoring platform, it is designed to serve as a resilient medical hub capable of supporting disaster response. The system has strong potential for deployment in rural communities, long-term elderly care facilities, school safety systems, and outdoor medical stations, where it can improve emergency healthcare efficiency and enhance public safety.

The team noted that transforming the concept into a fully integrated system required numerous rounds of testing and refinement while overcoming challenges related to cross-platform integration, data transmission, user interface design, and system reliability. Professor Yi-Jia Lin commended the students for dedicating evenings, weekends, and holidays to testing and optimizing the platform, emphasizing that the experience strengthened both their interdisciplinary collaboration skills and their appreciation of effective teamwork. Winning the Gold Award not only recognized the team's dedication but also reinforced their belief that technological innovation should directly address real societal needs. Looking ahead, the team plans to further enhance the platform by incorporating AI-powered analytics, telehealth capabilities, and intelligent emergency response technologies, with the goal of implementing the system in real-world settings through industry-academia collaboration. Their vision is to make smart healthcare technologies a vital force in strengthening healthcare resilience and protecting lives.

Taiwan Tech has long promoted interdisciplinary talent development and the practical application of smart technologies, encouraging students to transform innovative research into solutions for real-world challenges through hands-on projects and competitions. This national Gold Award not only demonstrates the students' outstanding engineering and innovation capabilities but also highlights Taiwan Tech's achievements in smart healthcare, sustainable technologies, and interdisciplinary engineering education.

The “SustainaMed: Smart Healthcare Energy Station” integrates renewable energy, intelligent health monitoring, and emergency medical support, offering strong potential for deployment in rural communities, educational institutions, and public safety environments.