NPC Deputy Calls for Accelerating Intelligent Transformation of Traditional Chinese Medicine Manufacturing
As the global manufacturing industry shifts towards greater efficiency and intelligence, this year’s Government Work Report proposes optimizing and upgrading traditional industries, expanding intelligent manufacturing, and strengthening quality supervision and brand building — a blueprint that has put the intelligent transformation of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) in the spotlight during the national Two Sessions.
An NPC deputy and academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, who has devoted more than 40 years to the TCM field, has long been engaged in the research and development of new TCM drugs, quality control in the pharmaceutical process and intelligent manufacturing. He designed and built China’s first intelligent TCM production factory, making remarkable contributions to the standardization and internationalization of TCM.
Focusing on the core issue of improving quality and efficiency in the pharmaceutical industry, he put forward suggestions at this year’s Two Sessions to further promote the high-quality development of intelligent TCM manufacturing, addressing the industry’s pain points in the transformation process.
The deputy noted that China’s proprietary Chinese medicine manufacturing is currently in a critical period of transformation from mechanization and automation to digitalization and intelligence. A long-standing core challenge across the entire TCM pharmaceutical chain — the difficulty in controlling ingredients and ensuring quality — has restricted the continuous improvement of industrial production efficiency and product quality. Intelligent manufacturing, he emphasized, has become an inevitable path to enhance the quality and efficiency of the TCM pharmaceutical industry.
To break through the bottlenecks in the high-quality development of intelligent TCM manufacturing, he proposed establishing a full-process quality control system centered on “efficacious substances” and developing an intelligent large model for the TCM pharmaceutical industry aimed at ensuring uniform and controllable quality.
He stressed the need to focus on in-depth research into “efficacious substances” to overcome the empirical bottleneck in traditional TCM quality control. Through special industry research initiatives, an intelligent large model adapted to the complex TCM system should be developed to realize full-chain intelligent decision-making, transforming TCM quality control from “post-event testing” to “pre-event prediction, in-process regulation and full-process control”.
The deputy also suggested driving the integrated application of intelligent engineering technologies in TCM manufacturing through intelligent large models, developing supporting intelligent equipment, and promoting in-depth integration of intelligent engineering technologies with all links of TCM manufacturing. This will help build a uniformity control and intelligent manufacturing engineering technology system suitable for the complex TCM system.
Noting that technological achievement transformation is the key link connecting scientific research and industrial practice, he proposed accelerating the implementation and promotion of technological achievements, promoting multi-party collaboration among industry, universities, research institutions and users, and establishing a closed-loop transformation mechanism covering technological R&D, pilot-scale verification and large-scale application. This mechanism will effectively bridge the gap between scientific research and industrial practice, enabling technological advances to truly empower TCM industrial development.
