The study on the situation of the existing researches on Thai wisdom and traditional
health care is a documentary research. The objective of this research is to study, collect and
synthesize the existing researches about Thai traditional medicine, Thai folk medicine and
alternative medicine from the year 2000 to 2009. The outcome of the research is likely to be used
as fundamental data for developing research problems and making a master plan for researching
on Thai traditional medicine, Thai folk medicine and alternative medicine. In addition, this
research is intended to be used as a reference source for relative studies for both the government
and private organizations. The research collected the abstracts from the researches which were
published in technical journals and the theses from libraries and electronic data base totaling
1,476 Titles. All of them were analyzed, synthesized and grouped into five main topics namely
Thai traditional medicine, folk medicine, alternative medicine, herbal medicine and systematic
researches for developing policies and strategy.
According to the research, during the past decade, among the selected relative researches,
most of them, 53.38 Percent, are researches on herbal medicine. The second most, percent, are
researches on alternative medicine, 17.88 percent. The rest are the researches on folk medicine,
15.98 percent and Thai traditional medicine, 12.73 percent. The researches on Thai traditional
medicine were broken down into six groups namely 1) The study on the history and status of Thai
traditional medicine textbook 2) Theory of Thai traditional medicine/ That traditional medicine
wisdom/Thai medicine 3) Knowledge and efficiency of Thai traditional massage 4) The
traditional medicine services 5) The studies for research and development and 6) Laws and
protection of Thai traditional medical wisdom. The researches on folk medicine were divided into
seven groups namely 1) Knowledge on folk medicine 2) Study on tribal groups’ medicine in
various dimensions 3) Study on medicine textbook and knowledge transfer 4) Study on folk
medical practitioners regarding their roles, existence, knowledge transfer and network groups 5)
Application in health care services 6) Study on folk herbal medicine knowledge, exploration,
preservation and diversity 7) Study on the relation between health care behavior and folk medicine. The researches on alternative medicine were divided into seven groups namely 1)
Definition of alternative medicine 2) Behavior of medical service using 3) Custom behavior of
medical service using 4)Reasons for using and not using 5) Satisfaction on alternative medical
services 6) Behavior factors 7) Situation and existence of alternative medicine. The researches on
herbal medicine were divided into four groups namely 1) Exploration of herbal medicine
knowledge from old books and local wisdom 2) Researches on herbal medicine using behavior 3)
Researches on herbal medicine knowledge management 4) Researches for creating innovations.
The afore-mentioned four main topics of the researches deal with medicine, people, products,
agriculture, food and cosmetics. The systematic researches for developing policies and strategy to
support the implementation of the national strategy to develop Thai wisdom and Thai traditional
health care for the year 2000 to 2009 were divided into five strategic groups namely 1)
Knowledge creation and management 2) Service development 3) Personnel development 4) Thai
traditional medicine and herbal medicine development 5) Protection of Thai traditional medicine
wisdom and herbal medicine.
In conclusion, this research proposed six guidelines for the future researches in support
of the five-fold strategy namely 1) To deal with the emerging problems which discourage
promotion of the acceptance and growth of Thai traditional and health care 2) To focus on the
future goals or dreams 3) To study the first priority matters or problems in order to prevent Thai
wisdom from vanishing 4) To deal with the weak points and lack of knowledge about protecting
the wisdom against legal attempts to steal 5) To do systematic researches on implementation and
application of the existing knowledge 6) To take into account the missing knowledge to drive the
national strategy and charter regarding the national health system. By the way, the proposed
guidelines should comply with the 11th National Economic and Social Development Plan and the
8th National Research Policy for the year 2012 to 2016, to achieve the country’s goal to create
health care self-dependency and the strength of the public health services.