How Western and Chinese medicine can work together

Based on an holistic approach, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has incorporated valuable experiences over thousands of years in healthcare, disease prevention and treatment with a complete theoretical system that has spread worldwide. 

Considering the global move from cures for disease to cures for health, the integration of Chinese medicine with international standards and statistics can better promote the development of traditional medicine in the world and make real contributions to human health. 

Chinese and Western medicine have their own distinct characteristics and advantages.

Rooted in Chinese traditional culture, TCM places significant emphasis on the 'human' in clinical practice, which pays attention to overall body functions and attaches importance to patients' feelings with the influence of climate, environment and emotion all considered. It's a kind-of personalized treatment.

Differently, Western medicine focuses on reducing analysis to anatomy and experimental studies with the emphasis of structure, objective indicators and microscopic analysis. It prefers pathological diagnoses, active ingredients of drugs, targets and processes of drug action.

TCM takes "harmony" as the starting point and looks to rebalance the yin and yang that can be thrown off kilter by pathogenic factors. Western medicine meanwhile is mainly based on "confrontation" cures driven by clinical measures and medical imaging techniques that bring indicators back to normal ranges – then a given disease is believed to have been healed. 

It can be seen that Chinese medicine and Western medicine are relatively independent medical systems with different theoretical bases, ways of thinking, and diagnosis and treatment methods. 

To complement each other, it is most important to present the diagnosis process of TCM with the characteristics of experience and individuation in a standardized way, by collecting and analyzing big data collected under the rules of TCM with modern artificial intelligence.

Thus with different emphases, the two kinds of medicine will achieve the purpose of jointly maintaining health and life.

The author is the president of Fujian University of Traditional Chinese Medicine.