Incorporating Artificial Intelligence and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) into a Western Medical Practice: A Case Study


Author: McGee, RW

Affiliation: Fayetteville State University, USA
Conference/Journal: Biomed J Sci & Tech Res
Date published: 2024 May 7
Other:
 Volume ID: 56   ,  Issue ID: 3   ,  Pages: 48149-48154   ,  Special Notes: DOI: 10.26717/BJSTR.2024.56.008864   ,  Word Count: 311  
    The goal of this study was to provide some guidance on how western medical practitioners can incorporate

artificial intelligence (AI) and traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) into their medical practice. Artificial

intelligence has become an increasingly popular adjunct to medical practices in recent years and will probably

be used even more frequently in the years to come. It has an increasingly large number of applications to a

wide range of medical specialties and can make medical practices more efficient in operation and can also

aid in medical research. Two chatbots, Microsoft Copilot and Elicit were used to demonstrate how AI can be

used in medical research. The first step was to find relevant research studies. The second step was to use AI to

summarize one of the research studies that had been published in a medical journal. The topic to be researched

was dawu (a.k.a. Da Wu), a set of qigong exercises, to see what kind of studies had been made of this tool of

traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). One relevant study was found. The PubMed database was then utilized to

find the article and Elicit was used to summarize the study’s findings. Elicit did a decent job of summarizing the

study’s findings, but the depth and detail were not adequate to satisfy the researcher, who then decided to read

the entire article in order to write up a more complete summary. The conclusion was that artificial intelligence

can be utilized as a tool of medical research, but it should only be the starting point of such research. It can be

used as a way to find and summarize relevant research, but AI has not yet developed sufficiently to go farther.

Human brains still must be used to carry the research beyond the initial stages.



Keywords: Dawu; Tai Chi; Qigong; Traditional Chinese Medicine; TCM; Artificial Intelligence; Elicit; Copilot