Ultimate Life Science: innovative management of education, public health, and welfare for aging societies

Abstract

Critical problems facing Thailand during the past 30 years is the decreasing numbers of young and middle age population which the number of ultimate age population continuously increases. Thus, it deems necessary for Thailand to modify the paradigm in planning, preparing, providing services, and assessing the aging population to get ready for taking care of the members of Thai aging societies. This article is aimed to present a new concept in developing the innovative Ultimate Life Science (ULS) as a new branch of Health Sciences. This is a multi-disciplinary program of study involving 12 disciplines spanning from the fields of Health Sciences to Social Sciences and Humanities embracing the body of knowledge, nomenclature, modes of inquiries, and moral, ethical standards for members of the ULS profession to perform their professional and academic work efficiently in caring health and welfare of the aging members to transform their life from the present ones to the next world by setting the ideology (philosophy, missions, visions, and commitments), goals, objectives, and educational management for professional degree and non-degree programs in ULS through the process of identifying desirable attributes of the graduates, conducting situational analysis, developing experience-based instructional systems, providing ubiquitous educational technology, identifying appropriate ULS instructional approaches, producing ULS instructional packages, implementing ULS instruction, and conducting ULS evaluation.