The plan gives health care technology vendors and hospital operators a national policy reference for TCM AI work, shifting attention to implementation.
China’s 15th Five-Year Plan for the Revitalization and Development of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) puts artificial intelligence inside a national health-system agenda, from data resources to hospital systems. At the World Conference on Traditional Medicine in Beijing on October 17, Premier Li Qiang urged deeper integration of AI and modern biomedicine with traditional medicine, as Xinhua reported. He described the plan’s digital and intelligent transformation as an important task.
Li said China has built the world’s largest traditional-medicine system and that TCM institutions account for about one-tenth of its medical institutions. He added that nearly all of the country’s medical institutions offer TCM services. His speech tied the proposed use of AI to revisiting the value of ancient formulas and improving diagnostic and treatment protocols, bringing a health-service context to the policy language.
The joint notice was published on July 23 by the National Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine (NATCM) and the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), after State Council approval, according to NATCM. The document sets directions and identifies future approval steps. Its text names no tender, spending plan or selected hospital.
The plan identifies data, hospital systems and frontline software
Chapter 10 calls for high-quality TCM AI data sets, structured collections used to develop and evaluate AI systems. It also calls for smart TCM hospitals and use of intelligent diagnostic-assistance tools at grassroots health providers. The policy calls for high-quality TCM AI data sets, smart hospitals and diagnostic-assistance tools in grassroots care.
The chapter also calls for domestically controlled digital infrastructure, data classification and protection, and the secure, compliant circulation of TCM data. It asks agencies to advance digital transformation through concrete use cases and data maps, while strengthening statistics and data sharing. The plan further calls for standards in TCM health services, intelligent equipment and drug quality.
Column 11 turns those priorities into project categories. It calls for a batch of TCM high-quality data-set projects and exploration of trusted data spaces and digital-innovation laboratories. It also says agencies should select hospitals with strong information technology and distinctive TCM applications to create innovative, leading and replicable use cases.
Hospital and primary-care settings define the intended use
Hospital construction and grassroots care are the plan’s two stated settings for AI-related work. A smart TCM hospital is an institution being upgraded with digital systems; the policy offers no list of selected facilities. At the local level, the notice calls for TCM intelligent diagnostic assistance, tools that support diagnosis and treatment work. It establishes no clinical-performance measure or named approval pathway for those tools.
The notice’s 2030 targets focus on broader TCM system capacity: practitioner density, service use, hospital department coverage and health literacy. Its AI chapter carries no parallel numerical targets for data-set completion, hospital rollout, clinical performance or patient use. Subsequent policy documents will show whether administrative priorities become operating programs.
The targets table expects the number of TCM licensed doctors per 1,000 people to rise from 0.64 in 2025 to 0.71 by 2030. It also aims to raise TCM visits’ share of nationwide visits from 20.2% to 23%. Those measures establish the plan’s system-level endpoint without quantifying AI adoption.
The next evidence will be in project approvals and hospital choices
Implementation may emerge through the plan’s projects. Its final chapter says important policies, major programs and key projects connected to the plan must follow approval procedures. That wording leaves subsequent decisions on budgets, procurement, data access and local execution. The notice names no awards, suppliers or hospital sites.
The plan also provides for dynamic monitoring, a midterm assessment and a final assessment of its implementation. Those formal reviews give agencies further points to report whether the policy has moved from planning into projects.
Li also encouraged Chinese and foreign research institutions and enterprises to participate in an open, collaborative international framework for TCM innovation. His speech directs attention to participation. The joint plan supplies the domestic policy framework. The concrete indicators to watch are projects that create the proposed data sets, identify smart-hospital sites, or set rules for diagnostic assistance in grassroots care.