Maneerat Ekkapongpisit: Translating research into real-world impact

My name is Dr Maneerat Ekkapongpisit. Basically, I do translational research and implementation research, in order to improve research output into practice. There are quite a number of research projects we've been involved with. Some of the research that is a showcase of our research is trying to help out the research projects on diagnostic tools. We're trying to understand what is the pathway for these translational research projects, to translate into real-world diagnostics, in the field; in a primary care hospital, secondary hospital, to use in like from bed to bedside, point of care, those kinds of environments. So, what we do is some clinical validation, help with FDA approval. We’re trying to understand what is the mechanism that a researcher needs in order for that research to be translated, and at the end we work with government's reimbursement programme in Thailand, and help that research piece come to be one in the list of the Thailand reimbursement programme.

The big questions in my translational research work, it would be how we transform the research management system, in which it could support better the researcher in order to translate their research output into a real-world practice. There’re a lot of things around that which include evaluations, impact frameworks, and how the funders should act in order to prioritise where research should be put into account that how the funders will be investing.

In translational research, basically we want to accelerate research to become something useful for patients, to help the treatment faster, to improve the journey of patients, and to make sure that everyone gets the same type of diagnostic and care from the health care system that we provide to patients.

Translational research is very important, in order to get improvements in patient care, with the very uncertain world's health systems right now, in public health, in global health. It's very important that we can develop tools very quickly to respond to that. Think back to the pandemic era - you can see many countries’ health systems have been corrupted during the pandemic. So, it's very important that we know how research could be managed in a proper manner, in order to make sure that every research output can then effectively help public health workers, health care professionals to improve patient’s outcome. That is where funders should look into this type of research more and more, because I think we could not live with the same research management system - there are times that we have to change accordingly.

This interview was recorded in September 2025.