PREDICTION OF TRADITIONAL CHINESE MEDICINE DIAGNOSIS

In the US, Traditional Chinese Medicine (CM1) research is still very much in its infancy. One of the areas of research that has had little attention is that of CM diagnosis. There are several reasons for this. First, the early researchers were all Western medical researchers with little or no knowledge of CM theory. For this reason, many of the earliest studies showed that CM treatments were ineffective. To further complicate issues, expert diagnosticians are rare much the same as in Western biomedicine. In the US, practitioners have to complete a four year Master‟s level program to practice and this is considered the bare minimum needed. Expert diagnosticians often have to complete doctoral level training in China. (While there are new doctoral programs in the US, as of yet, none of them have a diagnostic specialty.) As a diagnostic interview generally take an hour and some can take two, the cost of diagnosis is often very expensive. Therefore, a tool that helps relieve some of the burden of diagnosis from a research program would be of great utility.