An Investigation on Integrating Eastern and Western Medicine with Informatics

Today, in many western countries, acceptance of alternate forms of healthcare such as Chinese medicine (CM) is increasing. In fact, countries such as Australia, Canada, and England are going so far as to set regulations, education, and standards regarding the practice of CM in these respective countries. Further, we can see the integration between western and Chinese medicine delivery of care and treatments in many instances. Information Systems and Information Technology (IS/IT) can be a key enabler in assisting this integration. The following study examines aspects of such integrations using IS/IT and identifies that CM IS/IT is more likely to succeed when there is synthesis between key aspects of the unique environment and user requirements. This perspective is supported theoretically by adapting Churchman’s Inquiring Systems to frame CM as a combination of Hegelian and Kantian inquiring systems with the support of Singerian, Lockean, and Leibnizian inquiring systems and Knowledge Management (KM) features. Based on this, the study then proposes a new design for a patient management system in clinics and hospitals

TCMGeneDIT: a database for associated traditional Chinese medicine, gene and disease information using text mining

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), a complementary and alternative medical system in Western countries, has been used to treat various diseases over thousands of years in East Asian countries. In recent years, many herbal medicines were found to exhibit a variety of effects through regulating a wide range of gene expressions or protein activities. As available TCM data continue to accumulate rapidly, an urgent need for exploring these resources systematically is imperative, so as to effectively utilize the large volume of literature.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>TCM, gene, disease, biological pathway and protein-protein interaction information were collected from public databases. For association discovery, the TCM names, gene names, disease names, TCM ingredients and effects were used to annotate the literature corpus obtained from PubMed. The concept to mine entity associations was based on hypothesis testing and collocation analysis. The annotated corpus was processed with natural language processing tools and rule-based approaches were applied to the sentences for extracting the relations between TCM effecters and effects.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We developed a database, TCMGeneDIT, to provide association information about TCMs, genes, diseases, TCM effects and TCM ingredients mined from vast amount of biomedical literature. Integrated protein-protein interaction and biological pathways information are also available for exploring the regulations of genes associated with TCM curative effects. In addition, the transitive relationships among genes, TCMs and diseases could be inferred through the shared intermediates. Furthermore, TCMGeneDIT is useful in understanding the possible therapeutic mechanisms of TCMs via gene regulations and deducing synergistic or antagonistic contributions of the prescription components to the overall therapeutic effects. The database is now available at <url>http://tcm.lifescience.ntu.edu.tw/</url>.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>TCMGeneDIT is a unique database that offers diverse association information on TCMs. This database integrates TCMs with biomedical studies that would facilitate clinical research and elucidate the possible therapeutic mechanisms of TCMs and gene regulations.</p

Ontologies and Computational Methods for Traditional Chinese Medicine

Perinteinen kiinalainen lääketiede (PKL) on tuhansia vuosia vanha hoitomuoto, jonka tarkoituksena on terveyden ylläpito, tautien ennaltaehkäisemisen ja terveydellisten ongelmien hoito. Useat vuosittain julkaistavat tutkimukset tukevat hoitojen tehokkuutta ja PKL onkin jatkuvasti kasvattamassa suosiotaan maailmanlaajuisesti. Kiinassa PKL ollut suosittu hoitomuoto jo pitkään ja nykyään sitä harjoitetaan rinnakkain länsimaisen lääketieteen kanssa. Viime vuosikymmeninä tapahtuneen tietotekniikan kehityksen ja yleistymisen myötä myös PKL:n menetelmät ovat muuttuneet ja tietotekniikkaa on alettu hyödyntämään PKL:n tutkimuksessa. PKL:n tietoa on tallennettu digitaaliseen muotoon, minkä seurauksena on syntynyt suuri määrä erilaisia tietokantoja. Tieto on jakautunut eri tietokantoihin, joiden terminologia ei ole yhtenevää. Tämä aiheuttaa ongelmia tiedon löytämisessä ja tietoa hyödyntävien sovellusten kehittämisessä. Tässä työssä selvitetään, mitä PKL on, ja mikä sen asema on nykyään Kiinassa ja muualla maailmalla. Työn tarkoituksena on tutkia PKL:n tietoteknisten sovelluksen kehittämistä ja siihen liittyviä haasteita. Työssä perehdytään PKL:n ontologioiden ja semanttisten työkalujen toimintaan, sekä PKL:n laskennallisiin menetelmiin ja niiden tarjoamiin mahdollisuuksiin. Lisäksi kerrotaan uusimmista kansainvälisesti merkittävistä projekteista ja pohditaan tulevaisuuden näkymiä. Jo kehitetyt PKL:n tietotekniset sovellukset tarjoavat uusia mahdollisuuksia tiedon etsimiseen ja parantavat tutkijoiden mahdollisuutta jakaa tietoa ja tehdä yhteistyötä. Tietokoneavusteiset diagnoosityökalut ja asiantuntijajärjestelmät tarjoavat mahdollisuuksia lääkärin tekemän diagnoosin varmistamiseen. Tulevaisuudessa laskennallisia menetelmiä hyödyntäen voitaisiin tarjota terveyttä ja hyvinvointia edistäviä palveluja verkossa.Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has been used for thousands of years in China for the purposes of health maintenance, disease prevention and treatment of health problems. Several published studies support the effectiveness of TCM treatments and the global use of TCM is constantly increasing. In China, Western and Chinese medicine are practiced in parallel. During the past few decades, the use of information technology in medicine has increased rapidly. The development of information technology has opened up new possibilities for information storage and sharing, as well as communication and interaction between people. Along with the growing use of information technology, a wide variety of patient databases and other electronic sources of information have emerged. However, the information is fragmented and dispersed, and the terminology is ambiguous. The objective of the thesis is to examine the position of TCM today, and to find out what changes and new opportunities the modern information technology brings for different aspects of TCM. This study describes how ontologies and semantic tools can be utilized when collecting existing knowledge and combining different databases. Also different computational methods and TCM expert systems are introduced. Finally, the most recent projects in the field of TCM are discussed and the future challenges are reflected. The computational methods for TCM, such as diagnostic tools and expert systems, could be very useful in anticipating and preventing health problems. E-science and knowledge discovery offer new ways for knowledge sharing and cooperation. TCM expert systems can be used to generate diagnosis or automatic clinical alerts. In the future, a comprehensive and easily accessible online health service system could be developed and used to improve the health and well-being of people

Using IS/IT to support the delivery of Chinese Medicine

This study investigated aspects of utilising IS/IT in Chinese Medicine practice in Australia. The research proposed that a more suitable synthesis should be adopted for the developments in this domain. Hence, the Chinese Medicine Inquiring System is a combination of the key concepts of Knowledge Management, Inquiring Systems and IS/IT