Data Quality in Traditional Chinese Medicine

Data quality is a key issue in medical informatics and bioinformatics. Although many researches could be found that discuss data quality in the area of health care and medicine, few literature exist that particularly focuses on data quality in the field of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). Due to the high domain- specificity of data quality, it is of essential necessity to identify key dimensions of data quality in TCM. In this paper, based on TCM practice in past years, three data quality aspects are highlighted as key dimensions, including representation granularity, representation consistency, and completeness. Moreover, practical methods and techniques to handle data quality problems in these dimensions are also provided, showing how to enhance data quality in TCM field.