title: Promoting integrative medicine by computerization of traditional Chinese medicine for scientific research and clinical practice: The SuiteTCM Project.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Chinese and contemporary Western medical practices evolved on different cultures and historical contexts and, therefore, their medical knowledge represents this cultural divergence. Computerization of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is being used to promote the integrative medicine to manage, process and integrate the knowledge related to TCM anatomy, physiology, semiology, pathophysiology, and therapy.
  
  
  METHODS
  We proposed the development of the SuiteTCM software, a collection of integrated computational models mainly derived from epidemiology and statistical sciences for computerization of Chinese medicine scientific research and clinical practice in all levels of prevention. The software includes components for data management (DataTCM), simulation of cases (SimTCM), analyses and validation of datasets (SciTCM), clinical examination and pattern differentiation (DiagTCM, TongueTCM, and PulseTCM), intervention selection (AcuTCM, HerbsTCM, and DietTCM), management of medical records (ProntTCM), epidemiologic investigation of sampled data (ResearchTCM), and medical education, training, and assessment (StudentTCM).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The SuiteTCM project is expected to contribute to the ongoing development of integrative medicine and the applicability of TCM in worldwide scientific research and health care. The SuiteTCM 1.0 runs on Windows XP or later and is freely available for download as an executable application.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Computational Simulation and Modeling in Rehabilitation, Post-graduation Program of Rehabilitation Science, Augusto Motta University Center, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil. arthur_sf@ig.com.br
authors.forename: Arthur de Sá
authors.initials: Ade S
authors.lastname: Ferreira
mesh_terms: D035843:Biomedical Research; D003658:Decision Making, Computer-Assisted; D006801:Humans; D055048:Integrative Medicine; D008516:Medicine, Chinese Traditional