East meets West: current issues relevant to integrating Chinese medicine

Abstract

This article describes the challenges that integration of Chinese medicine (CM) and biomedicine are likely to bring for improving safety, research, education, and cross-disciplinary communication. Potential strategies to meet these challenges are suggested, including the use of accessible language for the Western biomedical community, and further development of whole-system randomized controlled trials that support individualized treatment approaches. © 2012 Wong et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.