Vicki Cheng

Monday, September 22, 2014

Three public hospitals will begin offering integrated Chinese-Western medicine services today.

The Hospital Authority's Integrated Chinese- Western Medicine Pilot Project will be a testing platform for doctors of both types of medicine to cooperate in setting out a clinical framework for hospital care.

Western medicine will be the main form of treatment and Chinese medicine will play an assisting role. Chinese and Western medicine doctors are encouraged to pair up when going into the sickroom to observe the in-patients together.

The two doctors will write in the same diary exchanging information before designing a treatment plan.

Cheung Wai-lun, director (cluster services) of the Hospital Authority, said: "This is not a research program on the medical value of Chinese-Western combined medicine. It is to try out the system to run this kind of protocol across the entire public medical network in future."

The first phase of the project, which will last for six months, will be carried out among stroke patients at Tung Wah Hospital in Sheung Wan, palliative care at Tuen Mun Hospital and acute low back pain at Pamela Youde Nethersole Eastern Hospital in Chai Wan. This will be followed by an evaluation before the next phase begins in March.

Three Chinese medicine centers for training and research will send out practitioners with at least four years' experience to join the project under a senior supervisor.

The authority's chief of Chinese medicine and integrative medicine, Eric Ziea Tat-chi, said he hopes the program can provide training opportunities for Chinese medicine doctors as well.

Continued here:

Hospitals pair Western, Chinese medicine in trial