Holistic integrative medicine: toward a new era of medical advancement

Medicine has encountered unprecedented problems associated with changes in nature, society, and environment, as well as with new human quests for survival, longevity, and health. In the meantime, the development of medicine is facing challenges that resulted from the over-division and specialization of disciplines and the fragmentation of medical knowledge. To construct a new medical system that is more suitable for human health and disease treatment, holistic integrative medicine (HIM), which regards the human body as a holistic entity, organically integrates the most advanced knowledge and theories in each medical field and the most effective practices in various clinical specialties to revise and adjust on the basis of social, environmental, and psychological conditions. HIM is the inevitable and necessary direction for the future development of medicine. In this article, we illustrated the connotation of HIM, the differences between HIM and other medical conceptions, and the practice of HIM in recent years.