Innovative Integrative Medicine

The terms ‘medicine’ and ‘innovation’ have been inseparable throughout medical history. Medical knowledge has continuously been expanding, and hand in hand with it went the development of technical solutions. From the beginning, interdisciplinarity also played a major role. The latest innovations in medicine over the recent years were and still are based on integrative medicine. High-tech acupuncture is one of these crossover approaches and a very successful one at that [1] . Only last month, the 1st World Congress of High-Tech Acupuncture and Integrative Medicine (HTA&IM-2014) took place in Nanjing, China ( fig. 1 ) [2] . The first in a series of Annual World Congresses [3] served as an opportunity to present and discuss the state of the art of multidisciplinary approaches to the modernization of integrative medicine, especially traditional Chinese medicine and acupuncture. The future congresses will also be excellent opportunities to establish research networks and scientific communication on these interesting traditional and innovative medical topics. As mentioned above, HTA&IM-2014 was the first congress in a series of planned future conferences on the same topic. In 2015, the congress will take place in Hangzhou, China, from May 22 to 24. Several renowned top experts already agreed to participate, and we hope to establish this conference as an annual meeting point for researchers and practitioners. This is also a cordial invitation to the readers of Integrative Medicine International to become an active part of this event. Further information can be found at http://www.bitlifesciences. com/HTA&IM2015 and http://www.litscher.info. Integrative medicine is the combined use of conventional and complementary/alternative medical treatment methods, in which case the latter’s safety and efficacy have to be proven scientifically. Because of its many benefits, integrative medicine deserves to be included in daily clinical practice [4] . Received: June 6, 2014 Accepted after revision: June 24, 2014 Published online: July 25, 2014