Post Author: Gerald Kuo
Gerald Kuo, a doctoral student in the Graduate Institute of Business Administration at Fu Jen Catholic University in Taiwan, specializes in health care management, long-term care systems, AI governance in clinical and social care settings, and elder care policy. He is affiliated with the Home Health Care Charity Association and maintains a professional presence on Facebook, where he shares updates on research and community work. Kuo helps operate a day-care center for older adults, working closely with families, nurses, and community physicians. His research and practical efforts focus on reducing administrative strain on clinicians, strengthening continuity and quality of elder care, and developing sustainable service models through data, technology, and cross-disciplinary collaboration. He is particularly interested in how emerging AI tools can support aging clinical workforces, enhance care delivery, and build greater trust between health systems and the public.
Gerald Kuo, a doctoral student in the Graduate Institute of Business Administration at Fu Jen Catholic University in Taiwan, specializes in health care management, long-term care systems, AI governance in clinical and social care settings, and elder care policy. He is affiliated with the Home Health Care Charity Association and maintains a professional presence on Facebook, where he shares updates on research and community work. Kuo helps operate a day-care center for older adults, working closely with families, nurses, and community physicians. His research and practical efforts focus on reducing administrative strain on clinicians, strengthening continuity and quality of elder care, and developing sustainable service models through data, technology, and cross-disciplinary collaboration. He is particularly interested in how emerging AI tools can support aging clinical workforces, enhance care delivery, and build greater trust between health systems and the public.
When a child dies under the supervision of the care system, the public response is often immediate and visceral. Media headlines demand answers. Prosecutors search for accountability. And very quickly, attention narrows to a single figure: the frontline social worker.
In recent child protection cases, the dominant questions have sounded strikingly similar. Why did they not notice earlier? Why did they not visit more often? Why did they not intervene?
These questions …
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We owe patients a better explanation about food.
The food didn’t change. The world did, and our guidelines followed.
For many patients, dietary advice feels less like science and more like whiplash.
Their breakfast looks the same. Their milk is the same. Their daily habits are exactly where they left them. What shifts, sometimes violently, is the label we attach to it: healthy, unhealthy, recommended, discouraged.
Consider milk
For decades, we told patients to switch …
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When Anne-Sophie Mutter appeared under the lights in Taipei to play John Williams, the audience was already aging with her. That is not a tragedy; it is a form of wisdom. In a super-aged society, an evening at the concert hall is not only entertainment; it is an anatomy lesson in movement, meaning, and care.
Tempo and governance
The program opened with “Sound the Bells!” The brass did not summon cinematic sentiment; …
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The number was specific: 18,000 steps.
It came from a retired hospital director in Taipei, a physician-administrator who spent four decades building services, negotiating budgets, and managing crises across a health care system that now treats an aging society as its primary patient.
Most physicians retire into silence. He retired into data.
But the more interesting revelation did not come from his smartwatch. It came from the dinner table.
A shift in governance
In Western …
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On a recent morning, my mentor, a retired breast cancer surgeon in his 70s, sent me a screenshot from his Apple Watch.
10,208 steps.
7.25 kilometers.
One flight of stairs.
Before lunch.
For him, it was just another day. For me, a younger volunteer and PhD student watching Taiwan age into a super-aged society, it was a quiet masterclass in what prevention really means.
This surgeon, Dr. Lin, is not just any retiree. For more than …
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Hospitals are not the only ones who rely on volunteers.
Nonprofits rely on them for aging programs. Faith communities rely on them for spiritual formation. Philanthropy relies on them for legitimacy. Even emerging “wellness” and “compassion training” industries rely on them for content and credibility.
But no one ever asks: Who sustains the sustainers?
For more than 20 years, I have watched hospital volunteers become the invisible infrastructure of modern care. We are …
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In Taiwan, the year 2026 marks our transition into a “super-aged society,” where more than 20 percent of the population is over 65. Yet what strikes me most is not the demographic milestone itself, but what it does to the dinner table.
During Lunar New Year gatherings, I often observe a tense choreography among middle-aged children. Who will take father to his cardiology appointment? Who will accompany mother during the day? …
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For many older adults living alone, a smartphone is not a convenience. It is a lifeline.
In elder care meetings, we often discuss telemedicine, wearable sensors, and remote monitoring systems. We focus on dashboards and data. Yet in our pursuit of high-tech solutions, we frequently overlook the most widely used and emotionally loaded digital tool already resting in older adults’ hands: the messaging app.
In Taiwan, as in much of Asia, LINE …
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Consider Mrs. Chen, an 82-year-old woman discharged home after a minor ischemic stroke. On paper, her care plan was flawless.
Her physician intensified her antihypertensive regimen to protect vascular health (medication). Her well-meaning daughter, concerned about blood pressure, switched her to a strict low-sodium porridge diet, unknowingly slashing her protein intake (nutrition). Her physical therapist prescribed a daily walking program to rebuild confidence and strength (exercise).
Two weeks later, Mrs. Chen was …
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At the height of the COVID-19 surge, many hospital leaders faced moments they will never forget. Beds were nearly full. Staff were exhausted. Supplies that once felt routine suddenly became scarce. In those moments, decisions had to be made quickly, often based on experience, instinct, and whatever information was available at the time.
We like to believe that good leadership means trusting our gut. In clinical medicine, intuition matters. Years of …
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I used to think the hardest part of building better health care was securing funding.
Then I watched the same cycle repeat itself: A promising pilot launches, early outcomes are celebrated, a report is written, and when the funding period ends, the program quietly disappears. The idea did not fail. It simply could not survive.
Nothing was wrong with the clinicians involved.
Nothing was wrong with the intention.
What was missing was a system.
Health …
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For years, hospitals have been urged to modernize. We are told to digitize workflows, optimize performance, and rely on dashboards and algorithms to improve efficiency. Much of this advice is reasonable. Medicine cannot function without systems.
But recently, while observing hospital transformation from within, I began to feel a familiar unease, one I had encountered before outside of medicine.
It reminded me of how digital platforms operate.
Platforms are not inherently unethical. They …
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On a winter evening in Taipei, random violence erupted across two of the city’s busiest metro stations. Within minutes, lives were lost, dozens were injured, and a familiar cycle followed: shock, fear, calls for more security, and questions about public safety. But for those of us in health care, this should not be framed as a failure of policing alone. It should be recognized for what it truly is: a …
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Medicine is getting faster, louder, and more efficient, and many of us feel something quietly slipping away. We talk about burnout, moral injury, and depersonalized care, but the deeper question is often left untouched: How do we keep the soul of medicine alive while building systems that must scale?
I encountered that question in an unexpected place, not in a policy meeting, not in a spreadsheet, and not in an architectural …
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When I first began working with clinical AI tools, I felt the kind of excitement many young clinicians and researchers feel today. For the first time, it seemed possible to reduce cognitive overload, surface hidden patterns, and give clinicians more time to focus on what mattered most: patients. AI felt less like a threat and more like a long-awaited collaborator.
As a young clinician-scholar, I did what many of us do. …
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I have spent years working with older adults in community and home-based care. During that time, I learned that one of the most stubborn barriers to health is not a rare disease, a complex guideline, or even a lack of services.
Sometimes, the barrier is a piece of paper. A flyer that an 80-year-old cannot read because the font is too small, a brochure filled with medical jargon that confuses more …
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Last month, a daughter called our care center in panic. Her mother, who lives with early dementia and mobility problems, needed support immediately. She had already contacted five agencies. All of them gave the same answer: “We have caregivers, but they are not allowed to work here.”
Not because the workers lacked skills. Not because the families were difficult. But because recent regulations now restrict long-term care workers to a single …
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Most discussions about cannabis stay on the surface: legality, crime, or medical claims. But the core question is this: What suffering does a society allow? After watching a recent documentary with police, lawyers, physicians, and families, I found cannabis is the stage. The real drama is the system behind it. When ethics is pushed far, inconsistencies become impossible to ignore.
1. Legal ethics: When the law punishes pain instead of harm
Some …
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Across conferences and journals worldwide, we repeat the same aspiration: Health care must shift from treating disease to promoting health. Yet most systems (regardless of country) remain architected around illness. Buildings, budgets, and workflows are still optimized for what happens after the body breaks down.
My perspective changed after speaking with a senior health care leader in Asia. He did not begin by discussing surgical innovation, emergency demands, or reimbursement challenges. …
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I used to believe that being a good physician meant being generous, flexible, and willing to bend the rules if it helped a patient. I don’t believe that anymore.
The lesson came from a young patient who walked into my traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) clinic one afternoon, looking exhausted, embarrassed, and desperate.
He needed a powdered herbal preparation that cost around NT$7,500 (about $230). He stared at the ground and whispered, “Doctor, …
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