Traditional Tibetan medical treatment goes digital

A Tibetan hospital has set up a database for collecting and recording prescriptions as well as other medical information as the region's health sector becomes more digitalized, according to hospital authorities.

With a history of more than 2,000 years, Tibetan cures and treatments have adopted traditional Chinese, ancient Indian and ancient Arab medicines.

However, Tibetan prescriptions written by doctors are scattered widely across the region. Prescriptions were not recorded in the past and this has hindered development and research of medicines and treatments, said Yeshe Yangzom, executive vice president of the Regional Tibetan Hospital in southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region.

The hospital started to collect and organize Tibetan prescriptions in 2009 and work is drawing to a close, Yeshe Yangzom said.

They selected about 100,000 out of more than one million Tibetan prescriptions preserved by 12 Tibetan doctors, and then encoded and categorized them digitally to an online database.

Medical workers can now have access to prescriptions offered by prominent Tibetan doctors on the database, which serves as a helpful reference for practitioners.

The causes and developments of many diseases and their prescribed medication and treatments can be found on the database, Yeshe Yangzom said.

The hospital has also recorded more than 100 ancient books about Tibetan medicine on the database, he said.

Other Tibetan hospitals throughout the region will have access to the database at a later date.

The hospital has also launched electronic medical records for patients, a first for Tibetan medicine development.

The region's hospitals plan to collect and add more Tibetan medical essays and magazines to the database so hospitals can share as much information as possible, he said.