title: Clinical decision making-a functional medicine perspective.
abstract: As 21st century health care moves from a disease-based approach to a more patient-centric system that can address biochemical individuality to improve health and function, clinical decision making becomes more complex. Accentuating the problem is the lack of a clear standard for this more complex functional medicine approach. While there is relatively broad agreement in Western medicine for what constitutes competent assessment of disease and identification of related treatment approaches, the complex functional medicine model posits multiple and individualized diagnostic and therapeutic approaches, most or many of which have reasonable underlying science and principles, but which have not been rigorously tested in a research or clinical setting. This has led to non-rigorous thinking and sometimes to uncritical acceptance of both poorly documented diagnostic procedures and ineffective therapies, resulting in less than optimal clinical care.
authors.affiliation: Joseph E. Pizzorno, Jr, ND, is the editor in chief of the peer reviewed journal Integrative Medicine: A Clinician's Journal and coauthor of the critically acclaimed Textbook of Natural Medicine . He is the founding president of Bastyr University, vice chair of the board of the Institute for Functional Medicine, Gig Harbor, Washington, and chair of the science board for Bioclinic Naturals, Coquitlam, British Columbia, Canada.
authors.forename: Joseph E
authors.initials: JE
authors.lastname: Pizzorno
keywords: Bayes inference; Functional medicine; artificial intelligence research; clinical decision making