Bangkok--18 Jan--TCELS
Thailand brings innovations into APEC Life Sciences Innovation Forum. A Mobile Unit can diagnose avian influenza virus at site and reduce the time needed from about a week to within 3 hours; reducing the risk of human touching sick or dead birds. AIDS software, reducing adverse effects and medical expenses, is another innovation to be presented.
The APEC Life Sciences Innovation Forum in Australia on January 22, 2007 is the forum for the 21 economies in Asia-Pacific regions. The topics of discussion are the scheduling of meeting among life sciences experts and senior officers in finance and public health and the planning for public-private partnership. Each economy will present its life sciences innovations to the forum for consideration.
As for Thailand, Dr. Thongchai Thavichachart, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Thailand Center of Excellence for Life Sciences (TCELS) said that TCELS, as the APEC Life Sciences national focal point, had collaborated with several organizations to search for outstanding life sciences innovations to be presented in this forum. There were two projects at the moment.
1.Avian Influenza Surveillance in Poultry. It was a hot issue as the disease broke out in several regions. Thailand, with experiences in coping with the disease, would present a Mobile Unit to reach poultry farms and diagnose animals for avian influenza virus. The result could be read in 3 hours comparing to about a week for the conventional method. This could lower the risk of those in direct contact with poultry which is the method to stop the pandemic at source. Besides, our presentation would also allow other countries facing with the pandemic to discuss and share their experiences.
2.Software for AIDS Surveillance. With this software, we were allowed to have electronic patient database which would be the key for developing more efficient and safer medicines. This would also reduce the time and procedure to discover and develop new drug resulting in lower overall costs and expenses in medication, public health system, and new drug manufacturing in the future.
CEO of TCELS said that both projects to be presented in the APEC Life Sciences Innovation Forum would first have to go through the Thailand Steering Committee for APEC Life Sciences whose meeting would be conducted on January 18, 2007.
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