The Faculty of Medicine, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, sponsored a symposium on point-of-care testing (POCT). Four papers from the symposium describe the status of POCT in a university hospital, critical care, a private hospital, and networked primary care units in Thailand. The authors introduce relevant demographic trends and health economics in Thailand and Southeast Asia, and emphasize the need for collaborative teamwork in arriving at acceptable strategies to fulfill societal, economic, and medical goals. Currently, projections reveal increasing populations of skilled workers (the demographic dividend), who will require health care support for maximum productivity, and of elderly, whose ranks will double during the next 2 decades, thereby creating a burden on medical services. The authors recommend quickly and efficiently addressing these challenges, in part through the cost-effective and selective implementation of POCT.