The 12th ISO/TC249 WG5 meeting and the Interview with new chair of ISO/TC249

- 10 Years of Achievement and Challenges to International Standard for Traditional Medicine-

The 12th ISO/TC249/WG5 Meeting was held in Seoul Korea, November 11 – 12, 2019. 50 experts from 5 countries attended this meeting hosted by Ministry of Health and Welfare of Korea.
※ ISO(International Organization for Standardization)
※ TC(Technical Committee)249 Traditional Chinese Medicine
※ WG5(Working Group 5) : Terminology and Informatics
※ 5 countries : Republic of Korea, Australia, China, Japan, United States

Korea Institute of Oriental Medicine(KIOM) interviewed Shen Yuandong, an ISO/TC249 Chair, who attended the ISO/TC249 WG5 meeting.

1. Ten years have passed since ISO/TC 249 was established in 2009. Please describe the achievement of 10 years and challenges for future.   

ISO/TC 249 has been established for 10 years. As a Chinese proverb says, ‘It takes a decade for sharpening a sword. (十年磨一剑)’ Over the past 10 years, we have overcome many difficulties and finally reached consensus on the title of the committee and its Strategic Business Plan. With joint efforts of experts from all member bodies, we have published 45 ISO standards, 46 projects are now under development. I would like to particularly thank South Korean delegation who has made great contributions to the development of ISO/TC 249. Among the 45 published standards, 14 standards were proposed by Korean colleagues, and 10 standards were developed with Korean experts as co-project leaders. There are 3 Korean experts working as ISO/TC 249 CAG members and 2 of whom are conveners of Working Groups.

Member bodies of ISO/TC 249 has increased from 20 to 41 since its establishment, which shows the great influence of ISO/TC 249 in the TM arena. In the ISO family, TC 249 is still a very young committee. TCM includes Korean medicine and Kampo medicine, both of them are related to traditional disciplines and industries. ISO standard emerges as a result of modern technology and industrialization, so it is a challenge for TCM, a long-standing traditional medical system and industry bearing unique characteristics, to share common international standard model in ISO family. How to better converge TCM with ISO standards still requires more efforts. Although TCM has been widely applied worldwide, member bodies may have seen imbalanced development, resources as well as legislation. Therefore, how to develop high-quality standards meeting market needs is also a task that we need to further study and think over.

2. It is considered that international standards in traditional medicine developed by ISO/TC 249 have great contribution to the advancement of traditional medicine. Please provide the example of the best practice of how ISO published standard affect the advancement of traditional medicine.

The objective of ISO standard is to promote the development of economy and society, which can be illustrated by many success cases in ISO/TC 249. For example, after the publication of ‘ISO 17218:2014 Sterile acupuncture needles for single use’, the company leading this proposal has received 30% more overseas orders than before. Another example is the publication of ‘ISO 21315:2018 Ganoderma lucidum fruiting body’ and ‘ISO 21370:2019 Dendrobium officinale stem’, which added value for the listing of the company. Based on these success cases, it can be concluded that ISO standard serves as a momentum to the business prosperity for enterprises.

We are thrilled to know that the legislative process of Traditional Medicine in some of our member bodies of Europe and Africa were promoted by taking reference to the standards published by ISO/TC 249. ISO/TC 249 standard helps people to apply Traditional Medicine in a scientific and safe way. ISO/TC 249 is a technical committee in the field of healthcare, which contributes to maintaining public health. We believe that ISO/TC 249 standards will definitely help achieve the ISO goal of ‘making people’s lives easier, safer, and better.’