East Meets West : Analyzing Digital Medical Records to Understand Treatment Efficacy



Eastern and Western medicine take very different approaches to the practice of medicine -- whether in prevention or disease treatment. And while, they may seem mutually exclusive, more and more clinicians are trying to understand how and when it may be best to integrate the two in order to prescribe the most effective, appropriate treatments for a patient.

Combining data from Traditional Chinese Medicine, along with the health data from EMRs and other systems, means exponentially more information from even more sources to sift through. In order to better research and understand medicine and treatment plans, the raw data needs to be transformed into an easily consumable format so that doctors and researchers can combine and analyze relevant patient data and clinical events to discern patterns of how populations are affected and respond to medical treatments.

To help solve this problem, IBM Research and South China's largest hospital, Guang Dong Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, a leader in integrating traditional Chinese medicine with contemporary Western medicine, are building healthcare analytics system that will help clinicians study the effects of Traditional Chinese Medicine in conjunction with Western medicine in treating Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD).

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