Yodchanan urges Thailand to use wellness economy to draw global investors
Yodchanan Wongsawat says Thailand should make wellness and health innovation a flagship industry to attract global talent, technology firms and investors.
Professor Dr Yodchanan Wongsawat, Minister of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation (MHESI) and a former director of Mahidol University’s Institute for Technology and Innovation Management (iNT), said Thailand should position the wellness economy and health innovation as key target industries to attract global investors and talent.
Speaking at the 10th anniversary event of Mahidol’s iNT, Yodchanan said Thailand’s innovation challenge did not lie in the capability of its people, but in the country’s still incomplete mechanisms for linking research and innovation to real-world use. He said iNT had played an important role in helping move research “from the shelf to the shop” by acting as a connector within the innovation ecosystem.
He said the institute had advanced this role through its L.I.F.T. Strategy, which brings together four key dimensions: Local Link, International Link, Future Link and Technological Enabler, with the aim of connecting domestic and international networks, preparing for future technologies and building an ecosystem that supports innovation development.
Yodchanan said Thailand needed to move beyond structural constraints in innovation, including funding limits, regulations and a culture focused too heavily on short-term “quick wins”, which he said was ill-suited to deep tech that requires time and long-term investment. As one possible solution, he pointed to the holding company model as a way to provide more flexible funding and help bridge early-stage research towards industrial-scale development before venture capital steps in.
He argued that Thailand should build on its existing strengths in medicine, herbal products and biodiversity by making wellness and health innovation a flagship sector. If upgraded successfully, he said, it could attract skilled people, technology companies and investors from around the world to establish a base in Thailand, while also helping drive growth in other industries over time.
Yodchanan also said Thai universities should eventually shift from relying mainly on tuition fees towards becoming centres of the innovation economy, generating income from research and intellectual property. That, he said, would create broader educational opportunities, help students support themselves while studying, and allow universities to play a stronger role in spreading prosperity beyond Bangkok and reducing inequality.
