| With the development of economy, people’s awareness of health gets improved. Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is gaining more popularity and recognition in the world by its functions of treating difficult diseases and promoting good health. Meanwhile, as an intangible cultural heritage, TCM receives high attention from central government and all walks of society. Government invests more into the research of TCM every year. TCM service has been a vital component of China’s medical service mechanism. It is reported that, TCM pharmacy is often full of people, which results in complaints of patients and even medical tangles. The low efficiency of TCM dispensing has been the primary obstacle for TCM development.Factors affecting dispensing efficiency include:design of TCM storage layout rearrangement (Doupu), dispensing procedures, and pharmacy management mechanism. TCM dispensing relys on the arrangement of materials in medicine cabinets. Existing Doupu in TCM hospitals and drugstores is designed by experienced TCM doctors or dispensing experts. While doctors’experiences may differ in person, Doupu of different hospitals and drugstores are different regardless of its reasonality. Scholars have found out that dispensing efficiency is closely related to dispensing procedures. Besides, attitudes and behaviors of working staff in pharmacy can exert impacts on dispensing efficiency as well.Based on the above background, to improve dispensing efficiency and shorten patients’ waiting time is essential. This paper adopts methods of literature research and field research to investigate factors affecting dispensing efficiency, and with the help of fishbone diagram, analyzes the key factors. FP-Growth method is used to dig out the underlying information of TCM prescription. Concurrency relation of TCM materials is explored to obtain compatibility law of TCM and design of Doupu. Meanwhile, ACO (ant colony optimization) is to calculate the optimal dispensing procedures. Furthermore, in terms of the background of TCM dispensing staff like their mental quality and responsibility, this paper provides some measures and suggestions for improving dispensing efficiency and service quality.This research is new in the following aspects:First, data mining is adopted to investigate concurrency relation between different TCM materials. Methods based on concurrency relation to design Doupu are also new in this field.Second, TCM dispensing procedures are presented with the support of information technology, and project of building a computer-based TCM dispensing system is explored. |