| Summary: | Background Effectiveness of CM treatment is based on accurate and reproducible CM diagnosis. However, CM diagnostic consideration is complicated. The intra/inter-rater reliability is relatively low in clinical research. It was reported that the percentage of congruent classifications by two CM practitioners (CMPs) on the primary diagnosis of patients with pre-diabetes was about 70% (Grant, Schnyer, Chang, Fahey, & Bensoussan, 2013). Nonetheless, over-simplified standardization of CM diagnosis in a research trial will compromise CM efficacy. Due to the complexity and inconsistency in CM diagnosis among practitioners, it is challenging to achieve reproducibility and consistency in assessment on CM efficacy and effectiveness. It is beneficial to enhance CM service quality by improving the intra- and inter-rater reliability among CMPs in terms of diagnosis. To achieve a reliable diagnosis, improvement on the standardization of terminologies, definitions and data collection is required. Development of a CM diagnostic system for making clear, understandable, and thus documentable CM diagnosis is urgently needed. Syndrome Elements (證素辨證) (Zhu & Yan, 2005) can be used to assist the diagnostic process and minimize potential variability between individual CM practitioners. Hence, CM research quality can also be improved with a view to promote EBCM in Western Medicine (WM) by bridging the communication gap between WM and CM. Objectives 1) To develop a CM diagnostic system by Syndrome Elements for stroke diagnosis. 2) To test the feasibility, reliability and reproducibility of the CM diagnostic system by conducting pilot field test.
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