Lack of standards becomes a obstacle to the internationalization of Chinese medicine

As an important branch of China's pharmaceutical industry, Chinese medicine industry has developed rapidly in recent years However, Chinese medicine industry has encountered many difficulties in the way of going abroad and expanding overseas market According to the overseas Chinese news, the UK drug administration announced that the sale of unlicensed Chinese herbal products in clinics and markets in the UK would be strictly prohibited from April 30, 2014 So far, no Chinese herbal products have been officially licensed in the UK This is undoubtedly a new blow to the overseas promotion and internationalization of traditional Chinese medicine Internationalization has been regarded as a way for Chinese medicine industry to break through the difficulties Traditional Chinese medicine has the characteristics of natural medicine, stronger health care and prevention, which is in line with the emerging consumption habits in the world, so it has been placed high hopes However, the effect of internationalization of traditional Chinese medicine is not good, and its share in the international market is very low "The development level of traditional Chinese medicine industry in China is still low, the R & D investment is seriously insufficient, and the proliferation of imitated and reformed varieties, as well as the lack of standards and specifications, have become the main constraints Due to the lack of market recognized standard system of traditional Chinese medicine, traditional Chinese medicine is still in an awkward position in the international market It is difficult to legalize its identity and become the mainstream in the international market " Guo Fanli, manager of CIC's consulting industry research department, said in an interview with China national economic news What are the reasons for China's traditional Chinese medicine industry's repeated obstacles in entering the international market? Guo Fanli said: first of all, it is a problem in the system Due to the lack of the standard system of traditional Chinese medicine, traditional Chinese medicine is measured by the standard of Western medicine, which fundamentally limits the development of traditional Chinese medicine Secondly, China has repeatedly exposed the "quality gate" events of traditional Chinese medicine, which has reduced the recognition of traditional Chinese medicine in the international market and greatly reduced the market demand The internationalization of traditional Chinese medicine has not been very smooth Due to the lack of perfect and clear regulatory standards, there have been many unreasonable links in the processing of traditional Chinese medicine, resulting in fake or even "toxic herbs", which has a bad impact on the image of traditional Chinese medicine in China At present, the lack of TCM standard system has been an important factor restricting the development of TCM industry Especially in the processing of semi-finished products, it is impossible to determine the content of effective components through accurate inspection indicators At present, the main detection method of traditional Chinese medicine still relies on manual detection, that is, experienced experts judge the quality of raw materials through observation, tasting and other methods As for toxic additives, there are no relevant standards and mature detection methods In addition, in order to develop the international market, traditional Chinese medicine should be integrated into the western pharmaceutical system, especially to adapt to the habit of full of quantitative and specific standards from experimental demonstration to specific application, which will encounter cultural differences However, the establishment of TCM standard system is not an easy thing Guo Fanli said that the composition of traditional Chinese medicine compound is unknown, which brings great difficulties to the quality control and mechanism of action of traditional Chinese medicine compound; the efficacy, toxicology and preparation of traditional Chinese medicine can not match with modern chemical drugs In short, some herbal medicines were originally proportioned together, but in order to comply with the standards of traditional Chinese medicine industry, we need to extract the active substances in these herbal medicines first, and then integrate these substances in accordance with the specified proportion The precondition of establishing the industry standard of traditional Chinese medicine is to analyze and classify all kinds of substances extracted from each kind of traditional Chinese medicine In addition to the construction of standard system, the self-discipline of traditional Chinese medicine enterprises is also important Before that, there were many reports about the mixture of toxic substances in raw materials of traditional Chinese medicine, which sounded the alarm for Chinese traditional medicine enterprises The safety of traditional Chinese medicine has not only affected its internationalization, but also closely related to the basic people's livelihood Traditional Chinese medicine enterprises cannot demand the loyalty of consumers in the name of "traditional culture", and market competition will not be merciful to any so-called "national essence" Guo Fanli believes that to successfully enter the international market, the precondition is that the traditional Chinese medicine industry has entered a mature stage in China, and there are still many problems in the development of traditional Chinese medicine industry in China, including drug quality and safety, raw material quality and safety, drug circulation and other issues Only by introducing various industry standards as soon as possible to promote industry standardization, can we lay a solid foundation for TCM to go abroad.