Issue 52

Pioneering research into the way that stroke victims communicate with the outside world has applications beyond Thailand.

Each day 36 people die from suffering a stroke in Thailand. That’s 13,353 per year, according to information from the Ministry of Public Health. Currently 751,350 Thais have suffered a stroke and the figure continues to escalate.

Piyasak Bunkhomrat, managing director of Meditech Solution, believes there has been a major change in the attitude of Thais towards their health.

“What we see now is that people are paying much more attention to their health, especially the elderly,” he says. “So we see the opportunity for innovation in medical science.”

One such innovation is SenzE, an eye-communication aid designed for paralysis patients. Certified and funded by the National Innovation Agency, it won the Thai IT Tycoon award and a bronze award at the TRUE Innovation Awards in 2012. It has been trialled at Prasat Neurological Institute.

“It is the world’s first Eye Tracking System embedded with Thai software,” explains Bunkhomrat. SenzE allows stroke and ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis) patients, who can not write or speak, to communicate with their eyes.

“Five years ago, I was talking to a friend who takes care of his father who suffers from ALS, and we discussed how technology can help these patients communicate,” says Bunkhomrat.

After studies, he discovered that only three countries – the USA, Sweden and Germany – have eye tracking technology to help patients communicate.

“I took the idea to the National Innovation Agency (NIA) and got research funding from the NIA and Chulalongkorn University,” he says. “We have a medical professor from the Institute of Neurology as our medical advisor and a professor from King Mongkut's University of Technology North Bangkok as a technical advisor.”

Although the use of SenzE is still limited, Bunkhomrat is looking into more commercial applications. “We are talking with developers to reach markets in Asia and Japan by 2017,” he says.

His experience has lead to Bunkhomrat realising that many good ideas are discarded at the planning stage.

“Thai entrepreneurs have really good ideas, but only a few of them become practical projects,” he says. “Most research ends with papers or prototypes that rarely reach the real market. So it’s time to get out of the box and see the opportunity.”

For more information, please visit www.meditechsolution.com
Words by Natthinee Ratanaprasidhi