Evaluation And Countermeasure Of Chinese Medicine Industry Niche

Western medicine, Chinese medicine and minority traditional medicine exist at the same time in our country. Since the beginning of the Opening-up policy, all of them have achieved varying degrees of development, but there are many problems accompanied, such as, the society has different views on the status and role of western medicine, Chinese medicine and minority traditional medicine in the Chinese medical system. Each pharmaceutical industry stands on their own point of views without understanding others, which resulting in a lack of a tripartite agreement evaluation system. All of those have further formed irreconcilable cognitive biases. Based on the specific circumstances of Chinese large population, heavy burden and limited medical resources, we must think about how to reasonable allocate the limited pharmaceutical industry resources to achieve maximize social and economic benefits. As an effective interpretation theory on internal development of competition in different species ecosystem, niche has good interdisciplinary advantage on analysis the competition and development of three pharmaceutical industries in Chinese medical industry. Unfortunately, at present, none of scholars who applied ecology theory to quantitative and systematic analysis the three pharmaceutical industries from niche.Chinese pharmaceutical industry might be considered as an ecosystem. Western medicine, Chinese medicine, and minority traditional medicine are living together under this ecosystem which have their own niche as three species. Besides, niche overlap must inevitably occur in similar relationships between species under natural ecosystems, i.e. competition, symbiosis, partial damage, predation, as well as parasitism.We analyze fourteen indexes of the status quo of pharmaceutical industry of China, including the government investment, the number of hospitals and practicing (or assistant)physicians, the number of registered nurses and hospital beds, the total income of hospital, drug varieties, the types of approved drugs, pharmaceutical market scale, the number of research institutions, the number of persons engaged in scientific and technological activities, the number of published in foreign and domestic, and the degree of social concern, via the research of Medical and health statistical review and government reports and related literatures, from 2003 to 2012 of the pharmaceutical industry of different provinces. Levins and Pianka formulas are used to calculate the data of different provinces during the ten years as well as the average of the three kinds of pharmaceutical niche breadth and niche overlap, then comprehensive analyze the occupancy and degree of overlap of three kinds of pharmaceutical industry on different resources, and discuss the causes. Then we use Analytic Hierarchy Process to screen and improve niche breadth and overlap degree of different resources in the calculation of the index, and referring to the world medical level and standards, we comprehensively evaluate the maturity of the development of three kinds of pharmaceuticals, and get the overall development level of the three kinds of pharmaceutical industry and the advantages and disadvantages of its development. After these analyses, we can get to some conclusions:1. In the ecosystem of Chinese pharmaceutical industry, western medicine is dominant and it is still rapidly developing with strong adaptability and competitiveness. Moreover, the niche overlap of Chinese medicine and western medicine is too high.2. Niche breadth of the minority medicine industry is too narrow, and its ability to resist risks and outside disturbance is weak. Furthermore, its future is uncertain yet and great risk still exits due to unchanged niche during this decade.3. Competition between the Western medicine industry and the Chinese Traditional medicine exits in the future.4. Government resources have a huge impact on the development of three pharmaceutical industries.5. In eastern and central western China, Western medicine is developed well, being followed by Chinese traditional medicine, while the minority traditional medicine is lagging behind. Western medicine is developed well, being followed by minority traditional medicine, while the development of Chinese medicine is slow.Some measures need to be considered as follows:1. Increase the breadth of niche of Chinese medicine and minority traditional medicine industry; adjust the niche breadth of Chinese traditional medicine to reduce niche overlapping between Chinese traditional medicine and Western medicine; expand breadth of niche of minority medicine; mitigate sincere competition among three industries.2. Optimize allocation of government resources in medicine industry; regulate horizontal niche and extend vertical one of medicine industries;3. Consider the development of Chinese traditional medicine and minority medicine with a view of community succession, admire their historical contributions, and rationally and scientifically assess whether their contributions are able to be made continually or not.