About Traditional Medicine

Traditional medicine (TM) has a long history. It is the sum total of the knowledge, skill, and practices based on the theories, beliefs, and experiences indigenous to different cultures, whether explicable or not, used in the maintenance of health as well as in the prevention, diagnosis, improvement or treatment of physical and mental illness. (http://www.who.int/medicines/areas/traditional/definitions/en/).

Many countries have their own traditional or indigenous forms of healing which are firmly rooted in their culture and history. Some forms of TM such as Ayurveda, Arabic & Islamic, Homeopathy, Kampo, Naturopathy, Traditional Chinese medicine and Unani medicine are popular nationally, as well as being used worldwide. TM is used not only to treat diseases, especially chronic diseases; it is also widely used in disease prevention, health promotion and health maintenance, and it has proved to be cost-effective for some governments.

There are many TM users in Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia and North America (WHO traditional medicine strategy: 2014-2023). In some countries, the majority of the populations continue to use TM to meet their health needs (Figure 1). To standardise clinical practice quality of TM, there is a need to develop clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) for TM. However, most guideline for TM is developed based on expert consensus and lack of systematic evidence-based methodologies.

It affects the authority of the guideline and limits the popularization and implementation of the guideline. To address these issues, there is a need to create a formal guideline development process that conforms to the characteristics of TM and follows the development methods of evidence-based CPGs. Based on this, we want to set up the TM working group to crate evidence-based CPGs development process and methodologies for TM and promote the formulation of high-quality guidelines of TM, and effectively promote TM to better serve patients.

Aims & Objectives

  • Creating formal evidence-based CPGs development process and methodologies that conforms to the characteristics of TM;
  • Developing evidence-based CPGs for TM to guide the practice of TM;
  • Establishing the alliance of TM CPGs to promote its popularisation and use in clinical practice.

Chair:
Professor Hui Li

If you are a GIN member and are interested in joining this Working Group, please email membership_manager@g-i-n.net.