Elsevier, the global information analytics business specialising in science and health, is working with Beijing University of Chinese Medicine (BUCM) to create a new taxonomy for traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) in Embase, the world's most comprehensive biomedical literature database. During the six-month collaboration, BUCM, one of the first institutions of higher learning on TCM, will review terms and help build a detailed, robust taxonomy to encompass all TCM data in Embase. The taxonomy will enrich and enhance the existing content in Embase; making it easily discoverable to users seeking knowledge from clinical practices for modern biomedical sciences. On completion, Embase will contain the most comprehensive taxonomy for TCM available.
Currently valued at 786 billion yuan (approx. $121 billion USD), the TCM market is growing, with pharmaceutical companies becoming interested in developing and verifying the benefits of TCM. Despite having been practiced for thousands of years, research into TCM can present some modern challenges. Although TCM literature from the historical period and from modern clinical studies has recently been digitized in relational databases or text documents, searching and retrieving the precise evidence using abstract and indexing databases remains a challenge. Further, TCM relies on numerous spellings, synonyms, translations, and symbols - with multiple ways to refer to the same medicine. The new taxonomy will cover a variety of branches, including the 'up' branch, 'narrow' branch and 'children' structure of TCM, enabling researchers to search for any of the compounds which may make up traditional Chinese medicines and discover linked results.
Beijing University of Chinese Medicine is one of the top ranking Chinese universities, with a long heritage of, and experience in, teaching TCM. The university is also involved in the Cochrane Collaboration, a global independent network of researchers, professionals, patients, carers and individuals interested in health. As part of the Cochrane China Group, BUCM is dedicated to publishing high evidence-based practices, which, along with its vast experience of TCM, makes it a great collaborator to help make Embase's TCM data more widely discoverable. The taxonomies will be provided in English, and researchers will be able to search the spelling of Chinese characters as part of the new taxonomies, which will be live in Embase in early 2019.
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