A glance at the move from complementary alternative medicine (CAM) to integrative medicine in the United Kingdom (UK), United States (US), and World Health Organization (WHO)'s health care systems

Abstract

Today's medical world has gained a growing appeal towards CAM/TM which can be seen in the strategies of US in the form of establishing National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy (WHCCAMP) at the White House, the annual increase of integration of CAM classical education in UK’s colleges and medical schools beside conventional medicine and strategies of WHO about the CAM. In this article we take a glance at some of the main strategies and programs of UK, US and WHO in the field of CAM/TM as examples of advanced modern medical system and their trend towards CAM/TM. 1-Increase of CAM/TM education integration in the medical education systems up to 60% (UK). 2-Emphasis of need to evaluate widely used CAM treatments for safety, efficacy and effectiveness by the use of modern experiments and clinical trials and presentation of credible data to curious public (NIH). 3-The need to train, encourage, and support of skilled investigators in both CAM and conventional medical academic communities and facilitating research, training, education and communication for interdisciplinary integration thus moving from CAM towards integrating medicine (WHO). With respect to the trend seen in medically advance countries, and considering that TIM is one of the oldest and richest branches of CAM/TM, in order to avoid falling behind the frontiers of today’s medicine which is now incorporating CAM/TM into its infrastructure, we propose that the IR of Iran must institute research, education, and therapy of TIM into the IRI health care delivery system.