NIA – TRF – TESA push Yothi area as Yothi Medical Innovation District

Thai Embedded Systems Association (TESA), in collaboration with the National Innovation Agency (NIA) and the Thailand Research Fund (TRF) to turn Yothi area which covers 4 sq.km. into a Smart City for Health that present technological showcases of Thai people.

The plan comes up as they see that Yothi area is Thailand’s hub of hospital and healthcare services.

Watchara Chatviriya, the President of TESA said the association will help facilitate, cooperate and link between the developers, embedded system companies including SMEs, startups, and large corporations to meet with target groups  such as hospitals, relevant state agencies such as NIA, Bangkok Municipality Administration (BMA), Royal Thai Police and others to join in the making of Smart City showcases in the targeted area.

The association is looking for private agencies and developers who have innovative ideas and want to create their works and seek financial support to create prototypes for actual use. It is believed that the prototypes created will help boost users’ confidence and enhance to be case studies for entrepreneurs to expand customer base in the future.

Most developers are rather keen in technology but they lack of capabilities in reaching out to customers. Also, they have to face the challenges in coordinating with government agencies or join the bidding with state agencies. The coordination on behalf of the association will enhance the efficiency and turn theories into concrete practices more effectively.

Yothi Medical Innovation District comprise of people in ICT-prone areas, service providers, property owners, business sector, educational institutes, government agencies and infrastructure-related organizations.

Solutions can be innovative, serve specific purpose, or large solutions. Turning Yothi area into a Health Community may start from building safe ecosystem, expand capacity in providing better healthcare services, quality health education, development of public transport within the area, training, job creation or safe residential area.

Aside from using censor and Internet of Things In designing a project, it should be able to link information from the devices and provide overall status of devices through dashboard. Some data should be open to public as open data so that it can maximize of the benefits of data.

Private companies which provide financial support can also do data analysis to benefit their businesses.

Assoc. Prof. Wiroon Sriborirux, a project coordinator for TRF’s digital industry research, said healthcare and medical service sectors in Thailand is quite outstanding in ASEAN as it is worth more than US$4.3 billion, while the total value of ASEAN is about US$2.4 trillion. Also, Thailand currently has 2.5 million foreign patients. This is a huge opportunity for health innovations.

In addition, health innovation development also serve Thai society which now has over 15 million aging population. Out of these numbers, 300,000 are bedridden patients, 3 million are homebound patients, and about 3 million are in need of nursing homes.

Using technology to link with sensor and devices in human body, at home, community, clinic and hospitals will enable the data access, make analysis which lead of immediate action for problem-solving especially in case of emergency. This requires the work on entire ecosystem as to create new business models.

There is a good example from Antwerp, Belgium’s second largest city, which acquires technologies from researches for actual use. The city is known for fashion, chocolates, diamond, and beer. The Smart City idea is applied to serve community’s needs by using IoT and gateway and cooperating with people in the community.  Public hearings were organized to listen to the needs of community people and involve them in the designing of Smart City by collaborating with private and public sectors.

For example, they encourage community people to plant strawberries in which the pots are equipped with censor devices to measure pollution in the weather. They also install IoT device which can take photos so that cyclists can do city report. And, they install smart lighting at basketball field. The city is widely open for all IoT service providers and use available technologies to protect privacy and ensure of cyber safety.  Such the idea of Smart City can be applied to turn Yothi a prototype area.

TRF currently has research fund which it has joined force with CAT Telecom to sign MoU to establish TRF-CAT funding to develop IoT innovation. Private agencies and developers can bring their project to request for financial support to do smart city at Yothi area.

Mr. Pariwat Wongsamran, Acting Director (Innovation Counsellor) of NIA, said smart city is an extension of Innovation District project. Yothi is one of the seven districts in Bangkok and is poised to become a medical innovation district.

Yothi Medical Innovation District is chosen to be a medical innovation hub as the area has a total of 11,363 medical experts. Out of these, more than 2,000 are working in the leading regional hospitals and hospital with specialize in certain field.

In this area, they can do web portal to link data of human resources, researches and exchange ideas to create opportunities in technology and health innovation which can lead to innovation that can be driven by information for MedTech.

For example, they use startup to arrange schedule to meet doctor, reserve or search for specific medical equipment such as MRI which vary from hospital or hospital, develop smart parking system in the hospital areas.

NIA has arranged activities to meet with representatives in the area to do City Lab and invite VCs in healthcare and MedTech entrepreneurs to join the project as to do faster collaboration.

NIA also prepare budget to provide financial support for users to do product market fit as to commercialize the project. But the product should be able to solve certain problems for people in the area and should be an innovation that can be further enhanced to be a sustainable development.

Currently, NIA is in the process of making bidding processes or ToR for government agencies so that innovation companies can propose their project to join the bidding, aside from doing accounting innovation.

It is believed that once the Proof of Concept which is a pilot project is actually materialised, it can be operated through Sandbox and make assessment and develop manuals for other areas to follow suit.