Chengdu Digital Medicine Research Institute: Empowering Primary Healthcare through Digitalized TCM Syndrome Differentiation and AI-Powered Prescription Recommendation

In recent years, the field of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has seen a continuous stream of favorable policies. With the formal implementation of the TCM Law and the successive release of the Outline of the Strategic Plan for the Development of Traditional Chinese Medicine, the Belt and Road Initiative Development Plan for Traditional Chinese Medicine, and the 13th Five-Year Plan for the Development of Traditional Chinese Medicine, the development of TCM has entered a golden age.

However, accelerating the modernization, standardization, informatization, and normalization of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) to propel its development onto a fast track remains the primary focus of current TCM practitioners.

Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine Institute of Digital Medicine (hereinafter referred to as the “Institute of Digital Medicine”) was established in 2010 and is currently one of the few research institutions in China specializing in the digitalization of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). Over the past decade, the team has made significant breakthroughs in key technologies such as TCM digitalization, software development, big data platform construction, and artificial intelligence, achieving remarkable results.

Photo provided by the interviewee

Among these, the institute independently developed a TCM-specific diagnostic and therapeutic support platform that, for the first time, achieved digital research on the “integrated continuum of theory, method, formula, and medication” in syndrome differentiation and treatment. It employs mathematical models to represent and reconstruct the cognitive logic of TCM syndrome differentiation and treatment, and enables intelligent functionalities such as prescription recommendation, diagnostic reasoning guidance, and medication alerts for TCM practitioners.

Amid new historical opportunities, how can the Digital Medicine Institute leverage its digital research achievements in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) clinical practice to empower primary healthcare? VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) conducted an exclusive interview with Wen Chuanbiao, Director of the Digital Medicine Institute.

In 2008, his experience as a medical relief team member participating in the earthquake rescue and disaster relief efforts in Wenchuan fundamentally changed Wen Chuanbiao’s research direction.

“At that time, we stayed in Pingtong Town, Pingwu County, Sichuan Province for seven days, visited many grassroots medical institutions, and found that there were many problems with the information systems of grassroots healthcare,” said Wen Chuanbiao in an interview with VCBeat.

He later summarized these issues into three points:

1. There is a lack of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) software in primary healthcare settings. Compared with experienced senior TCM practitioners, young physicians often face challenges such as insufficient confidence and clinical experience, as well as limited diagnostic and therapeutic options, when managing clinical conditions.

2. There is no information system specifically designed for primary healthcare. Due to issues such as differences in staffing, hospital information systems (HIS) used by large hospitals are often ill-suited for primary healthcare institutions.

3. The high sales price and subsequent maintenance costs of HIS systems impose a significant burden on primary healthcare institutions.

“So upon my return, I hoped to start from the grassroots level and provide information technology solutions for primary TCM medical institutions,” said Wen Chuanbiao. This was also his original intention in establishing the Digital Medicine Research Institute.

Thus, developing software for clinical practice in Traditional Chinese Medicine became the institute’s first R&D direction.

After nearly a decade of development, the Digital Medicine Institute has successfully developed 16 specialized Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) software products across three series, built upon its established mathematical models and algorithms that integrate TCM theory, diagnostic methods, prescriptions, and herbal medicines. This achievement fills the gap in clinical digital application software within the TCM industry.

The most core and distinctive module is the TCM Physician Workstation for Syndrome Differentiation and Treatment, also known as the TCM-Specific Diagnosis and Treatment Support Platform, developed by the Digital Medicine Research Institute for primary care physicians. Currently, this platform has been deployed in over 100 hospitals, including more than 80 within Sichuan Province.

The platform’s core technology employs 46-bit quantization code processing to compute the “nature, flavor, and meridian tropism” of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) formulas based on the “etiology, location, nature, and trend” of TCM syndromes. By graphically analyzing the degree of match between the “disease location and meridian involvement” of syndromes and the “nature, flavor, and meridian tropism” of formulas, the system can intelligently recommend therapeutic principles and prescriptions to physicians, predict treatment efficacy, and automatically generate fully structured electronic medical records for TCM.

In simple terms, during the diagnostic and treatment process, physicians need only input the patient’s symptoms and clinical manifestations. The system then automatically recommends corresponding prescriptions, dialectical reasoning frameworks, and medication alerts based on its algorithms, while supporting personalized modifications by the physician. Ultimately, the physician determines the patient’s treatment plan according to the specific clinical situation.

The core support behind it is a software that integrates the theory, methodology, prescriptions, and medications of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) into a seamless workflow. Wen Chuanbiao introduced that this software has two main scientific research breakthroughs:

1. Adopting the research on the 46-digit quantitative code for Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) conducted by pioneering scholars Professor Yang Dianxing and Professor Peng Mingde in the 1990s, this approach digitizes the traditional TCM practice of syndrome differentiation and treatment, thereby resolving the relationship between qualitative and quantitative aspects in TCM.

II. Construction of a Dynamically Optimized Big Data Platform. Based on 46-bit encoding, this platform establishes mathematical models and algorithms that seamlessly integrate the core components of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM)—namely, etiology/pathogenesis, therapeutic principles, prescriptions, and medicinals. Leveraging these algorithms, a clinical-oriented big data platform has been developed. Furthermore, by employing artificial neural network algorithms, the platform enables continuous algorithmic optimization and self-improvement. To date, the big data platform has accumulated over 3 million electronic medical records from clinical outpatient visits.

Wen Chuanbiao stated that, in addition to the digitalization of clinical traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) research, key R&D directions for current digital pharmaceutical research also include the integration of TCM with the Internet of Things (IoT), smart TCM cloud health research, and intelligent device research.

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