Transcutaneous electrical stimulation equipment is a kind of characteristic therapeutic devices developed on the basis of the integration of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) theory and modern science and technology, which is widely used in clinical practice. Significant breakthroughs have been made in the development of related devices such as transcutaneous electrical acupoint stimulation (TEAS) devices, transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) devices, and transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation (taVNS) devices in recent years. Although the market for these devices is vast, there are still limitations that need to be optimized in terms of electrode materials and power supply methods, bulky instrument size, cumbersome wiring, restricted applications, and inadequate intelligent functionality. In the future, it is still necessary to further build upon the theoretical foundation of TCM acupuncture, integrate a variety of modern scientific technologies to advance the intelligence and modernization of acupuncture equipment, and thereby improving its capabilities to support clinical practice and research.
Humans ; Transcutaneous Electric Nerve Stimulation/methods* ; Acupuncture Points ; Acupuncture Therapy/instrumentation* ; Medicine, Chinese Traditional

OBJECTIVE: To reveal the research status of fire needle by analyzing its patent applications, so as to provide reference for the development of fire needle equipment and the promotion of this therapy. METHODS: By searching the incoPat global patent database, from its inception to December 29th, 2024, the patent data on fire needle was collected. The patent analysis was employed on patent application trends, geographical distribution, patent types, current legal status, applicants and inventors, overall technical composition and distribution of applicable diseases. With the help of incoPat's "shared value" evaluation model, the technical efficacy value of patent was comprehensively measured from 3 dimensions, i.e. technical stability, technological advancement and protection scope. Using SWOT analysis, the matrix of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of fire needle technique was constructed, and then its development trend was analyzed systematically. RESULTS: A total of 346 patents were included, comprising 23 granted invention patents (6.65%), 219 utility model patents (63.29%), and 157 patents were in an effective state of validity (45.38%). The number of fire needle patent applications showed a growing trend since 2013 and peaked in 2021. The top 3 provinces and cities in terms of the number of applications were Guangdong, Beijing and Shandong. Existing patents focus on improving convenience, reducing complexity, enhancing safety and increasing efficiency; and are specialized in treatment of dermatological diseases. The results of patent research on fire needle show the application of updated materials, invention of equipment and expansion of applicable diseases. However, there are still some limitations such as technical complexity, high cost, lack of composite talents, lack of awareness of patent maintenance and insufficient international promotion. CONCLUSION Multiple strategies are proposed on the development of fire needle therapy, i.e. enhancing financial support and expanding the number of diseases, giving full play to regional characteristics and advantages to promote resource sharing, deepening the integration of industry, research and education to improve the quality of patents, strengthening supervision to reduce low-quality patents, and carrying out high-level research to promote technical standardization and internationalization, and enhance global competitiveness.
Patents as Topic ; Humans ; Acupuncture Therapy/methods* ; Needles ; China

By analyzing the problems existing in the existing medical service model,this paper explores the core health needs of people in the era of intelligent medical care,and puts forward people-oriented,"4S-PAMA"(Self-Perception,Self-Assessment,Self-Management,Self-Adaption)health service model with individual active health promotion as the core.At the same time to build a multi-level,many modules,interactive health management of traditional Chinese medicine harbor as the breakthrough point,science and technology innovation as the means,through to transform traditional medical center or create new health management,in order to further carry out"perception model of the health management"model applied to provide theoretical basis.

With the scientific and modernization of acupuncture,various kinds of acupuncture medical equipment continue to innovate,especially with the emergence of intelligent acupuncture diagnosis and treatment units,automatic detection of acupuncture needles in the"needle retention"stage of acupuncture clinical practice has become a hot demand.Aiming at the problems that the input image size is too large,the acupuncture needles are slender,and the acupuncture needles are densely distributed,the Acupuncture Needle Object Detection Model(ANODM),an improved YOLOv5 model for acupuncture needles,is proposed in this paper.① In the preprocessing stage,the image is divided into multiple patches for prediction,respectively.② At the model structure level,a new small object detection layer is added to the original three detection layers to improve the recognition ability of small objects.The ordinary convolution of the backbone network is replaced by the dialated convolution to increase the sensitivity field.Features of different stages are fused.③ In the post-processing stage,Soft-NMS is used to reduce the miss rate of positive samples,and cosine similarity match is used to reduce the error rate of negative samples.The experimental results show that,compared with the original YOLOv5,the detection accuracy of the improved YOLOv5 in this paper is improved by 4.2%on the acupuncture needle small object dataset,which can better complete the acupuncture needle small target detection task.

Objective To investigate the epidemiological aspects of traditional Chinese medicine(TCM)deficiency,excess syndromes and physical characteristics related to insomnia in China from 2000 to 2023.Methods A search was conducted across CNKI,WANFANG DATA,VIP,and PubMed databases to identify epidemiological studies on the deficiency-excess syndrome differentiation in TCM and TCM body constitution distribution among Chinese patients with insomnia.Descriptive statistical analysis was performed to summarize the syndrome differentiation patterns,geographical distribution,and demographic characteristics of the study populations.Results A total of 44 relevant studies were included,encompassing 22184 insomnia patients from 23 provinces,municipalities,and autonomous regions.Among these studies,75.0%employed cross-sectional research methods,while the remainder utilized retrospective analysis(6.8%),cohort studies(2.3%),and 15.9%did not specify their research methods.The primary focus of the surveys revealed that 52.3%concentrated on the distribution of syndromes,31.8%on the distribution of body constitution,and 38.6%on the distribution of primary symptoms of insomnia.The main survey results indicated that the majority of insomnia patients in China exhibited excess syndrome,accounting for 61.7%,while deficiency syndrome comprised 38.3%.The main findings indicated that the predominant TCM syndrome among insomnia patients in China was Qi deficiency of the heart and spleen,accounting for 54.6%.In the empirical population,Qi stagnation transforming into fire constituted 46.3%.Conclusion Over the past two decades,substantial data has been accumulated in China on the deficiency-excess syndrome differentiation and body constitution distribution in TCM for insomnia,providing a foundational basis for future research in this field.

Objective To construct a self-service traditional Chinese medicine(TCM)syndrome differentiation-based home sleep scenario and establish a home-based TCM sleep aid environment.Methods Based on medical principles and modern sleep-related technologies,this study divided the home sleep scenario into four dimensions:Perception,syndrome differentiation,intervention,and evaluation.It proposed a construction plan for a self-service TCM sleep aid home scenario that integrated these four dimensions.Results The proposed TCM sleep aid scenario solution enables collaborative collection data from various devices in a home setting.This involved the setup of hardware at the perception level,the development of software at the syndrome differentiation level,the integration of hardware at the intervention level,and data cleaning,fusion,and analysis at the evaluation level.These four components are interconnected,allowing for the extraction of physiological data that is valuable for TCM-based population classification and intervention,which can be used to update algorithms and improve accuracy through iterative upgrades.Conclusion The construction of a home sleep scenario based on TCM syndrome differentiation is feasible and can provide a reference for the promotion and application of appropriate TCM techniques in home settings.

Objective To investigate the epidemiological aspects of traditional Chinese medicine(TCM)deficiency,excess syndromes and physical characteristics related to insomnia in China from 2000 to 2023.Methods A search was conducted across CNKI,WANFANG DATA,VIP,and PubMed databases to identify epidemiological studies on the deficiency-excess syndrome differentiation in TCM and TCM body constitution distribution among Chinese patients with insomnia.Descriptive statistical analysis was performed to summarize the syndrome differentiation patterns,geographical distribution,and demographic characteristics of the study populations.Results A total of 44 relevant studies were included,encompassing 22184 insomnia patients from 23 provinces,municipalities,and autonomous regions.Among these studies,75.0%employed cross-sectional research methods,while the remainder utilized retrospective analysis(6.8%),cohort studies(2.3%),and 15.9%did not specify their research methods.The primary focus of the surveys revealed that 52.3%concentrated on the distribution of syndromes,31.8%on the distribution of body constitution,and 38.6%on the distribution of primary symptoms of insomnia.The main survey results indicated that the majority of insomnia patients in China exhibited excess syndrome,accounting for 61.7%,while deficiency syndrome comprised 38.3%.The main findings indicated that the predominant TCM syndrome among insomnia patients in China was Qi deficiency of the heart and spleen,accounting for 54.6%.In the empirical population,Qi stagnation transforming into fire constituted 46.3%.Conclusion Over the past two decades,substantial data has been accumulated in China on the deficiency-excess syndrome differentiation and body constitution distribution in TCM for insomnia,providing a foundational basis for future research in this field.

By analyzing the problems existing in the existing medical service model,this paper explores the core health needs of people in the era of intelligent medical care,and puts forward people-oriented,"4S-PAMA"(Self-Perception,Self-Assessment,Self-Management,Self-Adaption)health service model with individual active health promotion as the core.At the same time to build a multi-level,many modules,interactive health management of traditional Chinese medicine harbor as the breakthrough point,science and technology innovation as the means,through to transform traditional medical center or create new health management,in order to further carry out"perception model of the health management"model applied to provide theoretical basis.

Objective To construct a self-service traditional Chinese medicine(TCM)syndrome differentiation-based home sleep scenario and establish a home-based TCM sleep aid environment.Methods Based on medical principles and modern sleep-related technologies,this study divided the home sleep scenario into four dimensions:Perception,syndrome differentiation,intervention,and evaluation.It proposed a construction plan for a self-service TCM sleep aid home scenario that integrated these four dimensions.Results The proposed TCM sleep aid scenario solution enables collaborative collection data from various devices in a home setting.This involved the setup of hardware at the perception level,the development of software at the syndrome differentiation level,the integration of hardware at the intervention level,and data cleaning,fusion,and analysis at the evaluation level.These four components are interconnected,allowing for the extraction of physiological data that is valuable for TCM-based population classification and intervention,which can be used to update algorithms and improve accuracy through iterative upgrades.Conclusion The construction of a home sleep scenario based on TCM syndrome differentiation is feasible and can provide a reference for the promotion and application of appropriate TCM techniques in home settings.

With the scientific and modernization of acupuncture,various kinds of acupuncture medical equipment continue to innovate,especially with the emergence of intelligent acupuncture diagnosis and treatment units,automatic detection of acupuncture needles in the"needle retention"stage of acupuncture clinical practice has become a hot demand.Aiming at the problems that the input image size is too large,the acupuncture needles are slender,and the acupuncture needles are densely distributed,the Acupuncture Needle Object Detection Model(ANODM),an improved YOLOv5 model for acupuncture needles,is proposed in this paper.① In the preprocessing stage,the image is divided into multiple patches for prediction,respectively.② At the model structure level,a new small object detection layer is added to the original three detection layers to improve the recognition ability of small objects.The ordinary convolution of the backbone network is replaced by the dialated convolution to increase the sensitivity field.Features of different stages are fused.③ In the post-processing stage,Soft-NMS is used to reduce the miss rate of positive samples,and cosine similarity match is used to reduce the error rate of negative samples.The experimental results show that,compared with the original YOLOv5,the detection accuracy of the improved YOLOv5 in this paper is improved by 4.2%on the acupuncture needle small object dataset,which can better complete the acupuncture needle small target detection task.