Research On Clinical Genre Of Contemporary Acupuncture And Moxibustion Based On Text Mining

Backgrounds"Acupuncture therapy" and "moxibustion therapy" are together called Acupuncture-Moxibustion Therapy. The former derives from "stone needle" while the latter is from " treating disease by fire". Researches on academic genres that summarize Acupuncture-Moxibustion Therapy’s development path originate from the inheritance and development of its theories and methods by doctors of past generations, which are mainly divided into ancient part and contemporary part. The " Research on academic genres of Traditional Chinese Medicine(TCM)" research group(short in " research group") holds that the core factors of declining development of contemporary academic shools of TCM are teaching and inheriting patterns, lack of characteristic academic ideas, defect of inheriting systems and dilemma of family-inheriting patterns. And it is the same of the contemporary academic field of acupuncture. In recent years, the research situation and development status of contemporary academic genres of acupuncture are poles apart. The former is on the rise, whose research objects focus on the summarization of inheritance of individual doctor at the core. Relevant research methods of clinical doctor genres are writing literature of doctors’clinical experience to organize the academic experience for genre identification. This is closely related to the identity of the researcher. The data growth of literature with the title of " physician’s name" published at Chinese Acupuncture&Moxibustion from 1981 to 2013 began to increase in 1993 and intensified in 2005. State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine(short in"SATCM") have recognized medical individual or group with characteristic clinical treatment and issued the qualification of shool-inheriting. These inheriting workrooms include Shao’s Acupuncture Method from Henan, Huang’s Zhuang Acupuncture Method from Guangxi, Zhen’s Needling Method form Gansu, Peng’s Ocular Acupuncture from Liaoning, Li’s Pestle Needling Method from Sichaun, Five Mongolian Needling Method, Manipulating Methods for Meridian-promotion and Zangfu-regulation from Changbai Mountain, Acupuncture&Tuina Method of Compatibility of Five Meridians from Hunan, Guan’s Characteristic Needling Method, Jin’s Three Needling Method and Chengjiang Acupuncture School. The research object of another type is academic content. Through analysis of theories and treatment therapies of acupuncture, Tan Yuansheng discovers the existence of genres in contemporary academic field of acupuncture including Needling Method genre, Hui Needling genre, Special Acupoint Treatment genre, genre of Integrated Traditional and Western Medicine and holds that each genre has its own branch. Moreover, the researcher of this type should state the individual or group’s criteria for genre division at the start of the paper before drawing a conclusion.In conclusion, the development of academic genres is declining despite the increasing number of researchers on acupuncture genres.The first issues that researchers on acupuncture shools face are not-unified research objects and uncertain criteria. Those whose research objects are clinical acupuncturists focus on the discovery and spread of various academic content; those whose research objects are concrete methods or theories thoroughly discuss the development path and application scope. The former focuses on the discovery of academic content and lacks assessment of academic characteristics. On the other hand, its research objects of individuals, a personalized existence, result in difficulty to establish unified criteria, draw not-unified conclusions and embody the scientificity of genres. Despite the existing official or individual researches, there is no definite conclusion about the research objects and classification criteria of acupuncture genres.Objectives& SignificanceBased on existing monographs of clinical doctors,this research is aimed to identify the existing clinical genres in the academic field of contemporary acupuncture and unfold its developing status.Methodology& ProcedureInformation RetrievalAll articles come from the Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure(CNKI) and Wanfang Data. This research adopts a two-step retrieval. The first is to retrieve articles published at Chinese Acupuncture& Moxibustion from the above-mentioned databases and manually screen literature whose titles include the name of doctor for identification of the included name list of doctors. The second is to retrieve the item" the name of doctor" at CNKI and Wang-fang Data for relevant clinical monographs.Textual Information Mining MethodologyTextual Information ExtractionThe information extraction of academic characteristics from included text contains direct extraction of authors’statement and opinion extraction. Furthermore, the textual data is based on the extracted information to prepare for further data mining.Text classificationThrough observation, organization and combination with existing experience and other researchers’ academic opinions of mined textual information, this research classifies the therapeutic methods and theories of acupuncture into five main categories that are therapeutic methods, treated areas, therapeutic tools, academic ideas(therapeutic theories) and doctor practice and categorizes the acquired textual information accordingly.Database establishmentThis research has established the "Database for Mining Contemporary Doctors’Academic Characteristics of Acupuncture "based on the WPS Office 2013 Platform to input,classify and analyze the acquired information and data by text mining, which contains two main steps. The first is to establish database with the theme of " mining of doctors’academic characteristics" through direct acquisition of selected contemporary doctors’academic characteristics of acupuncture based on literature. The second is to classify, process and organize the acquired information in preparation for digitization.Standardization of textual informationThe standardization of acquired information is mainly based on the related therapeutic methods and treatment recorded in the 21st-printed edition of Science ofAcupuncture& Moxibustion published by Shanghai Scientific and Technical Publishers in 2009 to prepare for mathematical statistics.Mathematical statistic methodThis research has adopted frequency percentage analysis in mathematical statistics to observe the application frequency of each field that represents academic characteristics for data distributing situation. Through frequency analysis of academic characteristics, this research has underlined the clinical significance of each academic characteristics in the manner of data and indicated the scope and influence of clinical application of each academic features by the results of frequency analysis, which belongs to the quantitive research in academic genre research.Genre screeningBy adopting 80-20 Law, this research screens the first 20% fields in overall academic characteristics among the of frequency analysis results, based on which the maximum fields of the frequency analysis results are screened. Furthermore, the academic characteristics represented by these fields is considered to have the scope of shool formation and form passive genres.ResultsCriteria for genre identificationFirst, the genre should have its unique academic ides, representative individual or group) and inheriting team;Second, the genre should emphasize on the recognition of opinions and ideas and ally with individual’s academic views, methods and techniques.Third, the composition of genre should include conscious and non-conscious members. It is not limited to time and space if without a definite range.Forth, once the academic theories and operation methods have matured and taken shape, the genre can be further divided.Fifth, systematic theories or works are not compulsory to the genre.Identification of acupuncture genresIn this research, five genres in the contemporary academic field of acupuncture have been identified: the Simplified-Acupoint genre represented by Hu Yinpei, Chen Yinglong, Gao Lishan, Xiao Jifang, Zhang Zhilong, Yang Zhaogang and Yang Zhaomin, the Individualized-Therapy Genre represented by Guo Yaokang, Huang Zongxu, Shi Xuemin,Xie Qiang, Han Jingxian, Shan Yonghua and Tian Conghuo, the Matched-Acupoint Genre represented by Fu Wenbin, Zong Ruilin, Guan Zunhui, Du Xiaoshan and Dong Guirong, the Effective-Acupoint Genre represented by Li Ding, Li Wenrong, Zhang Shijie, Liu Gongwang and Li Zhidao and the Needle-Sensation Genre represented by Guo Xiaozong, Sheng Xiesun, Zhang Jin and Chen Yinglong. The Simplified-Acupoint Genre, the Matched-Acupoint Genre and the Effective-Acupoint Genre share the same superior genre:Acupoint-focused Genre. Moreover, the reinforcing-attenuating, the meridian differentiation, the microneedle and the functional are potential genres of acupuncture.DiscussionsBased on the textbooks of acupuncture, this research eliminates non-characteristic academic content to purify the generalized academic characteristics, provides intuitive evidence of application scope by Frequency Analysis Method, determines the clinical scope of academic characteristic by 80-20 Law and avoids the dispute caused by similar statistic data and finally proves that the existing genres meet the academic development status of contemporary acupuncture by the assessment and proof of formation and development of the five above-mentioned genres according to self-designed genre criteria.The researcher discovers problems that influence genres’research and development and tries to seek for solutions to predict the future development of acupuncture genre. Moreover, limitations of this research are mainly in literature quality, identification of academic characteristics, researchers, research levels, etc. Despite the limitations, the timeliness and objectiveness of this research are superior to researches whose research results derived from mere application of qualitative research methods.