Toward Precision Medicine: Genomics Thailand Project
Worawich Phornsiricharoenphant (PhD student, Micheal Baudis group)

Zurich Seminars in Bioinformatics

• 12:15 UZH Irchel Y55-l-06/08 and ZOOM Call

Abstract Genomics Thailand (GeTH) is the first national scale population genomics project fully funded by the government to drive the implementation and deployment of genomic medicine in Thailand in accordance with the 5-year plan medical hub strategy of the Thailand 4.0 strategic initiative. One of the Genomics Thailand’s goals is to establish the Thai reference genetic variation database collected from 50,000 whole genome sequencing (WGS) data of Thai volunteers. The database also houses clinical data as well as some important phenotypes of these volunteers that can greatly leverage home-grown genomic medicine research as well as other potential public health services in Thailand. The five areas of disorder focuses comprise cancer, rare/undiagnosed disease, non-communicable disease, infectious disease and pharmacogenomics. The project also included the new area focused on genetic study on many ethnic groups in Thailand.

My affiliation, National Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA) was appointed to participate in the design and implementation of both hardware and software aspects to process large genomic data in this project. I will share the information on how we established the GeTH information system. The system includes an enrollment system with electronic informed consent, a clinical and phenotype database, a specimen management system for monitoring and controlling the quality of the sample data, an accelerated genomic data processing system, and a clinical decision support system for annotating and prioritizing variants associated with diseases. This system will serve as a national infrastructure to support the future genomic project and new businesses in precision medicine in Thailand.