Digitising Chinese medicine clinical practice - a patient management system

Complementary medicine, such as Chinese medicine (CM), has been used for thousands of years to treat various health issues. In today's technology age, it behoves us to investigate opportunities to utilise information systems/information technology (IS/IT) to support the practices of CM. To do this, the following proffers, extending Churchman's inquiring system concepts in order to propose a CM inquiring system. This is done by incorporating Hegelian and Kantian inquiring systems with support from Singerian, Lockean, and Leibnizian inquiring systems, and key concepts of knowledge management to model the unique aspects of CM practice and thereby design and develop a possible technology solution. Combining qualitative methodology techniques with case study and design science methods, a specific CM inquiring system, a patient management system (PMS) prototype, was designed. The developed PMS represents a first step in the incorporation of IS/IT into CM practice. Copyright