2024 World Conference on Traditional Medicine concludes in Beijing

The 2024 World Conference on Traditional Medicine concluded in Beijing on Wednesday, with a declaration released to give full play to traditional medicine in universal health coverage and integration of traditional medicine with modern technologies. Co-hosted by China and the World Health Organization, the two-day event attracted over 3,000 attendees from 85 countries and regions, including more than 600 foreign representatives, to discuss the latest research results of traditional medicine and share practical experience.

The declaration released at the closing ceremony of the conference focuses on coordination and cooperation, protection and utilization, innovation and integration, which aims to promote traditional medicine in different culture and fields, enhance accessibility and equality, improve safety, effectiveness and environmental sustainability, so as to meet the highest attainable standard of health, ensure universal health coverage, and achieve sustainable development goals.

The declaration calls on all countries to continuously promote the integration of traditional medicine into their primary health care systems, intensify the integrated development of traditional medicine and modern medicine, and increase exchanges and cooperation on policies and regulations, health care, education and training, scientific research, industrial development, and mutual learning among civilizations.

A forum on advanced technologies and data-driven traditional medicine was held on the sidelines of the conference, gathering top experts and scholars from around the world to conduct in-depth discussions on traditional medicine, big data, artificial intelligence and life science.

"Through such cross interactions, we have not only retained the good part of our knowledge but also shed new light on the previous unknown, enriching our recognition and making our medical experiments more scientific instead of merely abiding by traditional rule of thumb," said Cheng Jing, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. "I think digital technology has everything to do with traditional medicine's development everywhere, starting from clinical practice to health system integration, to drug development, to new protocols developing new technology for diagnosis and treatment. Everywhere, digital technology and innovation has a lot to do," said Geetha Krishnan, director of WHO Global Center for Traditional Medicine.

China's software and information technology services industry saw a rapid expansion in the first two months of this year, reporting double-digit growth in terms of revenues, official data showed Tuesday.

In the January-February period, the total revenue of the software sector rose 11.7 percent year on year to more than 2.15 trillion yuan (about 311.83 billion U.S. dollars), while the total profits climbed 7.3 percent to 269.3 billion yuan, according to data released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Software exports increased by 12.7 percent on a yearly basis.

Software products registered steady growth in revenue in the two months, accounting for 21.9 percent of the industry's total revenue. Information technology services maintained double-digit growth and raked in roughly 1.45 trillion yuan in revenue, taking up 67.2 percent of the industry's total revenue.