From May 27 to 29, 2025, Thailand hosted the SNOMED CT Onboarding Workshop and Conference at Asawin Grand Convention Hotel in Bangkok, Thailand. Co-organized by the Thai Health Information Standards Development Center (THIS) under the Health Systems Research Institute (HSRI), along with the World Health Organization (WHO) Thailand, the Ministry of Public Health (MOPH), and the Asia eHealth Information Network (AeHIN), the event aimed to build national capacity in clinical terminology standards and promote regional collaboration through the Community of Interoperability Labs (COIL) network.
AeHIN played an integral role in the event. Dr. Boonchai Kijsanayotin, Chair at AeHIN and a Health Information Specialist at THIS, participated actively throughout and helped provide strategic direction. Mr. Intouch Laobandit from the AeHIN Secretariat supported with event preparation, logistics, and visibility, and emceed the event.
The event was led by THIS, with coordination overseen by its Director, Dr. Rath Panyowat, who is also a member of the Standards and Interoperability Lab – Thailand (SIL-TH). They were joined by regional counterparts from the Philippines, including Director Bently D. Roxas, representing the Department of Health Philippines, and Mr. Jan Michael Herber, a Terminology Specialist from the University of the Philippines Manila Standards and Interoperability Lab (UPM SILab).
Activities began with a strategic session on May 26 between SNOMED International and Thailand’s National Release Center. On May 27, over 90 participants joined a hands-on onboarding workshop covering SNOMED CT fundamentals, EHR integration, FHIR-based terminology services, and expression constraint language (ECL). The public conference on May 28–29 featured use cases and showcases from Thailand and global partners, highlighting national projects such as drug terminology modernization (TMT v2.0), endoscopic procedure coding, SNOMED–ICD-9-CM mapping, the Thai Classification for Nursing Practice (TCNP), and alignment with Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership Common Data Model (OMOP CDM) and HL7 FHIR.
The event demonstrated how strong national leadership, backed by global and regional collaboration, can accelerate standards adoption and digital health transformation. AeHIN and COIL remain key partners in supporting this momentum across Asia.