The World Health Organisation opens a major conference on traditional medicine on Wednesday, arguing that new technologies, including Artificial Intelligence, can bring scientific scrutiny to centuries-old healing practices.
The meeting in which was held in New Delhi, India will examine how governments can regulate traditional medicine while using emerging scientific tools to validate safe and effective treatments.
The UN body hopes this push will help make ancestral practices more compatible with modern healthcare systems.
“Traditional medicine is not a thing of the past,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a video released ahead of the three-day conference.
“There is a growing demand for traditional medicine across countries, communities, and cultures.”
Narendra Modi, the Indian Prime Minister said the summit would “intensify efforts to harness” the potential of traditional medicine.
Modi is a longtime advocate of yoga and traditional health practices and has backed the WHO Global Centre for Traditional Medicine, launched in 2022 in his home state of Gujarat.
Emerging evidence indicates that integrating TM into health systems can deliver cost efficiencies and improve health outcomes. Such integration emphasizes prevention and health promotion, contributing to broader health benefits such as more appropriate use of antibiotics.
Achieving effective integration requires robust science, global standards for quality and safety, and strong regulatory mechanisms. “We need to apply the same scientific rigour to the assessment and validation of biomedicine and traditional medicines, while respecting biodiversity, cultural specificities and ethical principles,” said Dr Sylvie Briand, WHO Chief Scientist. “Stronger collaborations and frontier technologies – such as AI, genomics, systems biology, neurosciences and advanced data analytics – can transform how we study and apply traditional medicine.”
Despite TM’s widespread use and vital role in stewarding natural resources for health and well-being, less than 1% of global health research funding is dedicated to TM. To help close the knowledge and research gaps, WHO is launching the Traditional Medicine Global Library, the first of its kind, featuring more than 1.6 million scientific records spanning research, policies, regulations and thematic collections on diverse TM applications.
The Summit (17–19 December 2025, New Delhi) will also announce new commitments from governments and other stakeholders, alongside a call for a global consortium to address systemic gaps and accelerate implementation of the Global TM Strategy at scale.
