In a sign of evolving technologies, a total of 3,030 AI-related traditional medicine patents have been published globally since 2000, and 6,882 high-quality academic papers have been released since 1990, the report said.

　　China accounted for 80.4 percent of the patents and 47 percent of the academic papers, demonstrating the scale of the nation's research and technological advantage in this field, it added.

　　In clinical practice, Li, the researcher, said that AI has been used to assist in examinations of a patient's tongue, pulse, facial appearance and other aspects, as well as in diagnosis.

　　For some syndromes, AI-assisted tongue diagnosis has proved to be 85 to 92 percent accurate, with the ability to distinguish experience-based symptom descriptions such as "a reddish tongue".

　　"Some digital twin models trained on the clinical experience, diagnostic reasoning and typical case records of renowned TCM practitioners have already been piloted in China's county-level TCM hospitals to expand access to quality TCM resources," she said.

　　AI has also been used to digitalize the surveying, identification, cultivation and supply chain traceability of medicinal plants, accelerate the screening of active ingredients and analysis of drug mechanisms, and advance basic research in areas such as jing luo, also known as meridians, through which the body's energy is believed to circulate.

　　Moreover, Li said AI has enabled more systematic reviews of ancient medical texts to bolster innovative inheritance of traditional practices.

　　In one case cited in the report, researchers used deep learning-assisted in vivo imaging to observe dynamic changes in immune cells in mouse models after electroacupuncture stimulation, offering a new perspective on how acupuncture points regulate the immune system, said Chen Jianxin, a professor at Beijing University of Chinese Medicine.