BEIJING, March 9, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), a treasure carrying the Chinese nation's health wisdom for thousands of years, is now reaching 196 countries and nations at an astonishing pace. It has become an important pillar of the Healthy China Initiative and a bridge for exchanges between Chinese and foreign civilizations.

During the 2026 "two session," Chinese President Xi Jinping stressed unswervingly following the path of health development with Chinese characteristics to ensure decisive progress in advancing the Healthy China Initiative during the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-30), Xinhua reported. Previously, the Chinese president has emphasized the importance of inheriting, developing, and utilizing this valuable legacy to promote TCM to the rest of the world. The Healthy China 2030 blueprint outline explicitly calls for fully leveraging the unique strengths of TCM.

Under such guidance, TCM has not only built a full-chain service system in China covering prevention treatment and rehabilitation, but is also breaking down prejudice through scientific evidence, rejuvenating itself with technological empowerment, and winning over young people with cultural appeal. A question is often raised around the world – how has this "ancient practice" become a "new favorite" in global health? To explore this, the Global Times is launching a series titled "Ancient ways, Modern cures," which examines from four dimensions why TCM is gaining increasing appeal worldwide. This article explores the first dimension.

In a TCM clinic in Shanghai, a "machine" is taking a patient's pulse.

The patient sits down, resting his chin on a support while placing his wrist on a sensor. Two minutes later, a screen fills with dense numbers, charts and analytical results, covering a wide range of indicators.

Centuries of TCM knowledge are being translated into data.

"It's amazing," the patient exclaimed. "I used to think TCM was somewhat abstract and mysterious. Now it has become something clear and visible."

What the patient experienced is the Intelligent TCM Diagnostic Instrument – an AI‑assisted modern diagnostic device for TCM developed under the leadership of a team from Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine (SHUTCM).

As AI tech advances at breakneck speed in China, and against the backdrop of the Healthy China Initiative and policies to promote the preservation and innovative development of TCM, this time-honored Chinese wisdom is exploring new possibilities through technological empowerment.

During the ongoing "two sessions," alongside the continued advancement of the Healthy China Initiative, the integration of TCM and modern technology has also become a topic drawing increasing attention.

For example, Wang Zunlai, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and president of Tianjin Beichen Beimen Hospital, noted that "AI is not a disruptor of TCM, but an accelerator for its inheritance and innovation."

"The key is to use intelligent equipment as a breakthrough point to transform experts' hands-on techniques into replicable and standardized technical parameters," Wang said, according to a report by The Paper.

The 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-30) represents a critical stage for advancing the Healthy China Initiative. How to move TCM's non-pharmaceutical therapies, which carry thousands of years of accumulated wisdom, from concept to practice, allowing them to take root in grassroots communities and benefit households across the country, has become an important question worth exploring.

Ancient wisdom meets modern tech

For centuries, the four traditional diagnostic methods of TCM – inspecting, listening and smelling, questioning, and palpating – have benefited countless patients. Rooted in doctors' experience and judgment, this approach carries the accumulated wisdom of TCM, although some critics point to its subjectivity and difficulty in standardization.

The Intelligent TCM Diagnostic Instrument is the product of marrying those traditional techniques with modern technology. Using high-precision sensors and advanced image processing, the machine - the larger ones are as big as a printer, while the smaller ones are like a handheld hair dryer - scans a patient's face, tongue coating and pulse, converting information that once relied on a doctor's subjective appraisal into objective, precise data, explained Xu Jiatuo, a professor at SHUTCM and director of the Research Center for TCM Information Science and Technology who leads the device's development program.

"Our database is huge and highly detailed," Xu told the Global Times on Sunday. "For example, for each pulse data we can extract more than 30 features – things like strength and width – and together these data build a complete 'digital portrait' of the pulse pattern."

Buoyed by support from both government and industry, Xu's team has brought the device into clinical studies at dozens of hospitals across China, and deployed it in health screening centers to serve a broader population.

TCM has strengths in early-stage diagnosis for some conditions, able to warn of increased disease risk before structural lesions appear, said Xu. "Adding modern technology allows that warning to be presented objectively as data, which essentially bridges TCM experience into the realm of modern medicine."

As AI is applied to diagnostic methods of TCM, the same technological wave is rolling into another crown jewel of TCM: acupuncture.

In January, the app AcuAssistant, jointly developed by the School of Artificial Intelligence in Traditional Chinese Medicine and the School of Acupuncture-Moxibustion and Tuina at SHUTCM, officially launched on the App Store. Using an iPhone's rear camera together with LiDAR tech, the app can capture and analyze in real time the amplitude and frequency of a practitioner's lifting-thrusting and twirling-rotating needling manipulations, without interfering with treatment.

"What used to be an experiential, hard-to-articulate 'feel' in acupuncture manipulation, has now been translated into unambiguous on-screen data," Tang Wenchao, a professor of the SHUTCM School of Artificial Intelligence in Traditional Chinese Medicine, told the Global Times.

Advantageous environment

What is happening in that Shanghai clinic reflects a broader trend in China, where policy support, industrial upgrading and academic research are accelerating the integration of emerging technologies such as AI with TCM.

In recent years, China has rolled out a series of policies and government support measures aimed at advancing TCM's development.

For example, in November 2025, China's National Health Commission issued implementation guidelines to promote and regulate AI applications in healthcare, highlighting efforts to integrate AI with TCM, including AI-assisted diagnostic tools, intelligent knowledge databases and digital traceability systems for medicinal herbs.

Industry is also moving in the same direction. According to a report by Economic Information Daily under Xinhua News Agency, technologies such as intelligent monitoring systems, blockchain-based traceability and advanced extraction methods are improving the quality control and standardization of Chinese herbal medicine, while AI-assisted diagnosis is helping enhance the efficiency of syndrome differentiation.

Meanwhile, academic research is exploring new possibilities. At the inaugural "TCM Innovation and Health" academic conference in Chengdu, Jiang Lei, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, noted that AI technologies could help clarify the pharmacological mechanisms of herbal medicine and identify effective compounds more precisely, promoting the scientific development of TCM.

For Xu, the convergence of technology and TCM in China is not accidental, but the result of several structural advantages.

"Today, the general public shows growing acceptance of medical models rooted in traditional culture, such as TCM. This renewed cultural confidence provides an important starting point and creates a favorable environment for the integration of technology and tradition," he said.

As these technologies evolve, tech-enabled TCM is also attracting increasing attention overseas.

According to the China-Africa Innovation Cooperation Center, at the African Center for Traditional Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture in Johannesburg, South Africa, a 71-year-old patient, experienced an AI-assisted consultation in which facial and tongue scans generated a health report within minutes in January 2025. Chinese specialists in Sichuan later joined remotely to discuss treatment while local practitioners carried it out on site.

A Tianjin-based tech firm and a Saudi medical institution are co-developing AI algorithms and big data platforms to standardize oncology treatment protocols. This project applies predictive analytics to clinical data, enabling the integration of TCM into digitized, evidence-based therapy plans for international hospitals, Tianjin publicity department introduced in June 2025.

Eyeing the future

With the development of intelligent TCM technologies, some of the most "futuristic" ideas are beginning to move from imagination to reality. Receiving TCM services in space, for instance, is no longer just the stuff of science fiction.

A team led by Zhou Peng, director of the Tianjin Key Laboratory of Intelligent Traditional Chinese Medicine Diagnosis and Treatment Technology and Equipment, has developed this portable transcutaneous electrical acupoint stimulation device in collaboration with Tianjin University of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

The device has been carried aboard multiple Shenzhou manned spacecraft for space experiments, Zhou told the Global Times. "The research aims to explore how wearable acupoint stimulation can help regulate astronauts' physical and mental health in a weightless environment and safeguard their well-being," he said.

Zhou said the experimental results are still being analyzed, but he remains confident about the technology's future applications. "Through brain-computer interface technology, we hope patients can move from passively receiving acupuncture to actively participating in regulation with their brains during rehabilitation, which may help stimulate neuroplasticity and improve rehabilitation outcomes," Zhou said.

As these technologies move from laboratories and space missions into everyday healthcare, questions are also emerging about how AI and new technologies should be used in medical decision-making.

During the ongoing "two sessions," Zhang Wenhong, a member of the National Committee of the CPPCC and a Shanghai-based infectious disease expert, said in an interview with The Paper that while AI-assisted self-diagnosis can provide certain health reminders, it also carries risks if patients begin to believe AI can replace doctors.

Given the current stage of AI development, Zhang said the more reasonable and safer approach is to position AI strictly as a "super assistant" and an "amplifier of doctors' capabilities." In other words, while AI-powered healthcare should continue to develop, strengthening grassroots medical services remains essential, as primary healthcare institutions form the foundation of the medical system.

https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202603/1356631.shtml

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SOURCE Global Times