Development Process of Medicine as a History of Integration and Its Current Implications

The processes that Korean Medicine(KM) and western medicine have developed their respective disciplines and expanded their organizations were reviewed from an integrative perspective. Based on this review, current strategies for expanding the scope of practice of the KM field were derived. In KM, the goal of integrative medical education is to provide standardized interpretations of commonly accepted fundamental KM theories and integrative understanding methods between modern medicine. Historically, from the early stages of KM's history, encompassing the formation of the Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon and Treatise on Cold Damage and Miscellaneous Diseases, and throughout the entire period up to the present, there has been a continuous process of integrating heterogeneous medicinal knowledge and medical theories. As has been the case so far, integration is to strengthen the ‘scientific principles’ requested by the government and courts to define and identify ‘Korean medical practices’. Therefore integration is an indispensable element for the advancement of medical association and medicine itself, and a concrete consensus among KM members regarding the methods of integration is essential to achieve it.