WHO To Define Traditional Medicines Standards

The World Health Organization intends to develop a new classification scheme for traditional medicine intended to provide web-based platform for users to document ideas and terms used in traditional medicine.

National standards already exist in some countries, but there is as yet no international platform “that allows the harmonization of data for clinical, epidemiological and statistical use. There is a need for this information to allow clinicians, researchers and policy-makers to comprehensively monitor safety, efficacy, use, spending and trends in health care,” said Marie-Paule Kieny, assistant director general of Innovation, Information, Evidence and Research at WHO, the department under which the Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property programmes are housed.

The platform will focus first on traditional medicine from China, Japan, and Korea, according to the WHO press release.