Prospect of the Objectification of Pulse Diagnosis in Traditional Chinese Medicine in the Age of Big Data

—As one of the most distinctive diagnostic methods of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), objectification of pulse diagnosis has a wide range of practical applications. Though the studies on objectification have been conducted for decades, due to small sample sizes, the results are satisfactory and clinical promotion is still in the embryonic stage. The arrival of the era of big data has not only promoted the development of biomedicine, but has also opened up new ways for the objectification of pulse diagnosis in TCM. In this review, we describe theories and methods of big data that may be applied to the objectification of pulse diagnosis in TCM. We propose to establish electronic health records for TCM and create a predictive model for pulse diagnosis and prospect the challenges and opportunities involved.