Oriental and traditional medicine – Supporting the vision for integrated health

Oriental and traditional medicine -Supporting the vision for integrated healthTraditional medical whole systems as reflected in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), Korean medicine (KM) and Ayurveda are unique integrated approaches to health which are rarely experienced in their entirety in the West.In this issue half of the articles are from countries in Asia, particularly Korea, where such integrated practices are commonly used as alternatives to western medical practice.The 16th International Congress of Oriental Medicine 'The future of medicine -traditional medicine', took place September 17 to 19 in Seoul.With 16,000 delegates mainly from Korea, China, and Taiwan, the breadth of laboratory, experimental and clinical trial research was impressive.The conference, which initially began in 1976, attracted international speakers from all over the world; USA, Russia, New Zealand, Norway, Egypt, Australia, India, Austria etc.As part of the conference, the Korean Medical Association hosted a round table workshop which was conducted with editors from 4 major Complementary and Integrated medicine journals, including The European Journal of Integrative Medicine (EuJIM).After formal presentations on recent trends and experiences, a debate took place and information was exchanged about the rapidly growing literature in this field.The scope of various journals in the field were discussed as well as the importance and responsibility of authors to submit their articles by taking into account the focus, scope and scientific community they wish to target and a plea to ensure that preferably, a native English speaker should check their article before submission.Please note, the aims, scope and audience for EuJIM have been recently re-defined and are given at the end of this editorial.In 2008 in Korea, Pusan National University opened as the first government funded university to include a school of Korean medicine, as well as Western and dental medicine, and nursing schools.The School of Korean medicine has both inpatient and outpatient facilities and a remarkable purpose-built clinical trials centre.The Korean Institute of Oriental medicine (KIOM) was established under the Ministry of Health and Welfare in October 1994 and is still the only government funded oriental medicine research institute in Korea (now under the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology).It became a WHO collaborating centre for traditional medicine in 2011.We took part in the first International Clinical Practice Guidelines symposium on Traditional Medicine at KIOM on the 17th September 2012.Lessons learned were shared and comparisons made between guidelines on KM, Kampo medicine, Western medicine and the current Traditional Chinese Medicine clinical guidelines with a view to develop a coherent strategic approach which could be used more universally.The authors of this editorial were also invited to lecture over 200 doctors at the Jaseng Hospital of Korean Eastern Medicine, in Seoul.Jaseng was appointed by the Ministry of Health and Welfare government in 2007 as the only hospital in Korea specialising in the treatment of the spine.