Research Article Enhanced Evidence-Based Chinese Medicine Clinical Practice Guidelines in Hong Kong: A Study Protocol for Three Common Diseases

which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. We presented a study protocol of developing Chinese medicine clinical practice guidelines for three common diseases in Hong Kong, including insomnia, chronic gastritis, and cerebral infarction. This research project will be conducted in three phases. First phase is the preparation stage which consists of the establishment of steering committee and panel. Second phase involves 6 steps, which are searching and identifying evidence, text mining process, Delphi survey, synthesizing of data, consensus conference, and drafting guidelines. In this phase, text mining technique, evidence-based method, and formal consensus method are combined to get consolidated supporting data as the source of CM CPGs. The final phase comprised external reviews, dissemination, and updating. The outputs from this project will provide three CM CPGs for insomnia, chronic gastritis, and cerebral infarction for Hong Kong local use. 1. Background Clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) are commonly defined as “systematically developed statements to assist practi-tioner and patient decisions about appropriate health care for specific clinical circumstances ” [1]. They can improve health outcomes, the quality of clinical decisions, efficiency, and optimistic value for money [2]. Several major medical organizations, including the American Medical Association (AMA) and the Institute of Medicine (IOM), have carefully formulated methodology for developing scientifically soun