高齢者の健康管理におけるウェアラブルデバイスと中国伝統医学の役割

早大学位記番号:新8258早稲田大

Knowledge management system and infertility treatment using Traditional Chinese medicine

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has been practiced for over 5000 years. Different from western medicine which has its origin from anatomy, TCM is based on the ancient Chinese perception of humans as part of the environment and universe, subject to nature and its forces, therefore, health and diseases are direct result of the interaction of humans with the environment and the balance of distinct yet interconnected organs. The effectiveness of TCM has been recognized widely, yet due to its complexity and underlying conceptual foundations, it is very challenging to seek scientific evidence on how it works using lab experiments. This paper discusses an ongoing knowledge management project that is built on the logic of TCM treatment of infertility. The purpose of this project is to promote understanding of the TCM treatment, uncover its underlying theories, preserve TCM knowledge, and facilitate its continuing development

Clinical effects of Xinmailong therapy in patients with chronic heart failure

In the last 100 years, intensive studies have been done on the identification of the systematic approaches to find the cure for the chronic heart failure, however the mystery remains unresolved due to its complicated pathogenesis and ineffective early diagnosis. The present investigation was aimed to evaluate the potential effects of the traditional chinese medicine, Xinmailong, on the chronic heart failure (CHF) patients as compared to the standard western medical treatment available so far. In our study, we selected two groups of voluntary CHF patients at the Xiangya Hospital, which were allowed to administrate Xinmailong or standard treatments, respectively. Another group of voluntary healthy individuals were recruited as the control group. The treatment effectiveness was measured by five symptomatic factors, i.e. angiotensin II (Ang_II), high sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs_CRP), Left Ventricular End Systolic Volume Index (LVESVI), left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) and pro-B-type natriuretic peptide (NT_proBNP), between the control group and the CHF patients at different stages of drug administration and in different treatment groups. The timeline for the full dose administration was set to 15 days and five measurements as indicated above were taken on every 0, 7th and 15th day of the drug administration respectively. In the conducted study, similar symptomatic measurements were observed on day 0 in both treatment groups, and slight improvements were observed on 7th day. It was observed that after a full course of drug administration for 15 days, both of the treatment groups achieved statistically significant improvements in all the five measures, but Xinmailong was found to be more (almost double) statistically significant as compared with the available drug treatments for chronic heart failure. © Ivyspring International Publisher

IMPROVING CHINESE MOTHERS’ HEALTH LITERACY: A WECHAT INTERVENTION

The health literacy and eHealth literacy of women during the reproductive age is crucial, as it can affect their health and the health of their children. Promoting health literacy is essential to achieve mothers’ empowerment by improving access to and capacity of using health information effectively. However, functional, interactive, and critical health literacy and eHealth literacy have never been assessed among Chinese women. The first study during this dissertation assessed functional, interactive, and critical health literacy and eHealth literacy among 421 of Chinese mothers with children under 3 years old. The results revealed overall less than optimal level of health literacy. Maternal age, education, occupation, household income, residency, preference of Western versus Traditional Chinese Medicine, children’s age, time different caregivers spent taking care of the children were identified to be related to health literacy levels. The second study in this dissertation explored the role of health literacy and eHealth literacy in the use of health information among the same group of Chinese mothers. While high health literacy and eHealth literacy were related to more frequent and higher confidence in the use of health information, low health literacy was connected to the use of low-quality health information and may have negative impacts on personal, family, and community health. In the third study in this dissertation, an intervention based on a smartphone app WeChat was developed and implemented among 240 Chinese mothers with young children. This intervention significantly increased mothers’ confidence in their ability to appraise health information from WeChat. Mothers demonstrated improved functional, interactive and critical health literacy skills in focus group discussions. Increased health literacy skills also empowered mothers to make better health-related decisions for their children. WeChat-based interventions have the potential to improve all categories of health literacy skills among women with young children. Promoting health literacy may improve personal and community health outcomes

CWDM: A Case-based Diabetes Management Web System

Managing diabetes using intelligent techniques is a recent priority for healthcare information systems and the medical domain. Diabetes is one of the most widespread diseases around the world including Australia. Numerous intelligent systems supporting diabetes management (DM) have been widely deployed, yet how to effectively develop a DM system integrating intelligent techniques remains a big issue. Case-based reasoning (CBR), as an intelligent technique, has been applied in various fields including customer services, medical diagnosis, and clinical treatment. This paper proposes a case-based lifecycle for DM consisting of case-based symptoms, case-based diagnosis, case-based prognosis, case-based treatment, and case-based care. The lifecycle is integrated with a web-based system in which CBR functions as an intelligent intermediary. The approach proposed in this research might facilitate research and development of diabetes management, healthcare information systems and intelligent systems

A Comparative Analysis of the American and Chinese Pharmaceutical Industries

Following the growth of the Chinese pharmaceutical consumer market and innovative capability, comparisons between the American and the Chinese pharmaceutical industries have become commonplace due to two very divergent governmental, competitive, financial, and knowledge environments, as scholars and businesspeople alike attempt to predict shifts in power dynamics. Previous pharmaceutical industry research has focused on a single country, broad industry analysis (Ni, et al., 2017), or has conducted specific cross-border comparisons which fail to consider the respective macro-environments (Jiang & Luan, 2018; Zhao M. , 2021). This literary review examines four environments relevant to pharmaceutical innovation to achieve a broad and comparable understanding of the two industries, ultimately finding that the American industry is a well-established player focused on highly innovative activities, while the Chinese industry is a relative newcomer that is quickly developing innovative capabilities relevant to global competition dynamics

Elucidating the Relationship between Chinese Medicine and Systems Biology: A Multi-Sited Ethnography

Ever since Chinese medicine encountered modern science in the late nineteenth century, the relationship between the two traditions has been extremely one-sided. At best, scientists perceived Chinese medicine as an archive of primitive knowledge from which potentially useful drugs could be extracted. Chinese medicine practitioners themselves, meanwhile, began a long struggle throughout the twentieth century to modernise their medicine with the help of Western theories and technology. At the turn of the twenty-first century, the involvement of systems biologists in Chinese medicine research created a new encounter, however, that, at least in the rhetoric of its actors, promised a very different kind of relationship: a match of two systems brought together by a shared interest in understanding life, health, illness and medicine as intrinsically complex and not amenable to the reductionist approaches of mainstream science. This research empirically investigates the nature of this relationship and how it emerged. It aims to contribute to the contemporary history of Chinese medicine by exploring the relationship between Chinese medicine and systems biology. This thesis argues that a heterogeneous network evolved, which is composed of human and nonhuman actors and their interactions created globally distributed research projects on Chinese medicine and systems biology. For the purpose of this research, a multi-sited ethnography was conducted over a period of eleven months and a literature survey was employed to trace the start and the development of this heterogeneous network. Ethnographic data reveals in four chapters on the rhetoric and perceptions of the actors, their involvement in Chinese medicine research, their laboratory practice, and the networks and political ties, which developed into a heterogeneous network of Chinese medicine and systems biology research. This research concludes that in the 2000s, a heterogeneous network emerged through the shared ideologies of systems thinking and holism. The shared ideologies set the groundwork for systems biologists to engage with Chinese medicine on its own terms, and created scientific practices, co-operation and funding opportunities between Europe and China