Precision medicine in Thailand

Abstract

Extraordinary advances in high throughput next generation sequencing (NGS) technology and bioinformatics are the main thrust that transforms the current state of healthcare into the era of precision medicine where clinical practice takes individual variability into account. Here, we summarize the current status of the infrastructure we have and the adoption of precision medicine in Thailand in four spheres: rare diseases, oncology, pharmacogenomics, and noncommunicable diseases. Moreover, we provide our perspectives to the future of precision medicine in Thailand, especially the manpower and ethical, legal, and social issues. We believe that with decreasing costs of NGS, increasing ability to interpret the genomic data, a greater number of actionable and available treatments, implementation of precision medicine at the public health level is not a matter of if but when.

Keywords: Thailand; noncommunicable diseases; pharmacogenomics; precision medicine; precision oncology; rare diseases.