Medical and Healthcare Academia–Industry Partnership Ecosystems in Indonesia and Thailand

This report examines the evolving start-up and innovation ecosystems in Indonesia and Thailand, with particular emphasis on the medical and healthcare sectors. While Indonesia demonstrates steady economic growth supported by an increasingly established start-up ecosystem, Thailand benefits from comparatively strong corporate venture capital participation. Despite these strengths, medical and healthcare start-ups in both countries remain limited in number and scale. Key constraints include high commercialisation costs, regulatory complexity, and insufficiently developed policy and financing frameworks tailored to health innovation. Although industry–academia collaboration is present in both countries, it remains concentrated in leading universities and is largely focused on intellectual property licensing rather than the systematic translation of research into scalable innovations. Mechanisms to incubate and implement innovation within academic institutions are still underdeveloped. The report highlights the need to strengthen the broader industry–academia–government ecosystem through targeted cluster development, improved research and testing infrastructure, and more structured collaboration platforms. It further underscores the strategic value of cross-border partnerships – particularly with Japan – to accelerate technology transfer, enhance investment flows, and promote sustainable, innovation-driven healthcare development across the region.