Advancing Whole-Person Health through Informatics: A Narrative Review of Knowledge Resources for Complementary and...

Area of Science:

• Integrative medicine and health informatics.
• Computational biology and bioinformatics.
• Nutritional science and personalized nutrition.

Background:

• Complementary and integrative health (CIH) interventions are vital for whole-person health but lack integrated evidence.
• Existing knowledge resources on CIH efficacy, safety, and mechanisms are fragmented.
• Challenges in data interoperability hinder the advancement of CIH research and application.

Purpose of the Study:

• To map existing CIH knowledge resources and identify critical gaps.
• To propose AI-driven informatics strategies for standardizing and integrating CIH data.
• To advance precision nutrition and personalized approaches to health and well-being.

Main Methods:

• Conducted a narrative review of publicly available CIH knowledge resources.
• Categorized interventions as nutritional, physical, or psychological.
• Classified resources including knowledge bases, datasets, databases, ontologies, knowledge graphs, platforms, and initiatives.

Main Results:

• Identified 47 resources supporting CIH informatics (15 knowledge bases, 13 databases, 7 datasets, 4 platforms, 3 initiatives, 3 ontologies, 2 knowledge graphs).
• Nutritional interventions were the most common category (32 resources), with 13 focusing on the microbiome.
• The majority of identified resources (39) were publicly accessible.

Conclusions:

• Standardization and integration of CIH knowledge resources are crucial for advancing whole-person health.
• AI and informatics methods, when applied to well-structured, interoperable data, can unify diverse knowledge domains.
• This integration accelerates scientific discovery in complementary and integrative health and personalized nutrition.