Editorial Whole-Systems Research in Integrative Inpatient Treatment

Copyright © 2013 Thomas Ostermann et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. In the last years, medicine has seen a shift from a deperson-alized towards a patient-centered individualized medicine. This, on the one hand, is based on the achievements in the field of genetics and molecular science fostering an individually designed drug therapy and treatment tailoring [1]. On the other hand, research on patient-practitioner inter-action, psychosocial and behavioral conditions of chronic diseases, and a patient-centered treatment approach has revealed that nonpharmacological factors such as empathy might be essential parameters for the outcome of the patient [2].Moreover, complementary therapies as traditional whole-medical systems (Ayurveda, traditional Chinese medicin