The evidence system of traditional Chinese medicine based on the Grades of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation framework

Evidence-based medicine (EBM) originated in the 1990s (1). It has become the current development trend and direction of clinical medicine. Decision-making in medicine must be based on the current best evidence, which is the key point of EBM, has been accepted by more and more people (2). “Evidence” is the key and core of EBM, while after nearly 20 years of development, the classical definition of evidence can not summarize the whole content of EBM (3,4). If we do not establish an evidence focused system, it will cause the misunderstanding and misuse of EBM (5,6), and will be a large drag on the development of EBM.