Computerized Chinese medicine tools

Posted by DAAN on January 5, 2008 under Acupuncture |

Researchers are looking to develop technologies to help with traditional Chinese medicine diagnosis:

“Traditional Chinese medicine, a 5,000-year-old science, has gone high-tech with a revolutionary computerized diagnosis system.

Wang Yiqin, a 30-year veteran of TCM research, is leading a team to electronically translate TCM code to the world.

Wang’s research has led to the development of electronic equipment which follows the four-step TCM diagnostic method including inspection (wang), olfaction (wen), inquiry (wen) and pulse (qie).

Wang, a professor at the Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, said the technology would release TCM wisdom to the world.

“Our vision is to accurately translate the language of TCM and make it understandable and reliable to not only Chinese but foreigners,” Wang said.

The system, called computerized tongue and pulse diagnostic tools, can tell patients whether they are ill in minutes, based on a computer, sensors, a re-designed question and answer list and database analysis software.

As shown at an industry fair recently, the diagnosis machine, through its sensors, can measure people’s pulses in the Chinese traditional way.

It then sends the pulse’s frequency and vibration to a laptop computer for analysis. The machine determines whether vital organs (wuzang) are working normally, such as heart, kidney and liver (TCM’s definition of organ is slightly different to the Western definition). People get a printed result showing several pulse lines and what they represent.

“TCM doctors can use them to compare patient conditions before and after the treatment and they can use detailed figures to prove the effect of treatment,” Wang said.”