ABSTRACT
Objective To explore suitable pre-processing methods for the TCM clinical data based on prospective study on insomnia treated by syndrome differentiation. Methods Based on the TCM shared clinical and research information platform and by using man-machine combination method, data cleaning rules, physician review, rule revision, procedural import and batch processing were used to conduct pre-processing for data in prospective study on insomniac treated by syndrome differentiation of 8 TCM doctors. Results Totally 27534 rules for symptoms data of individual treatment of insomnia were made and 1036 rules for diagnostic data, 842 rules for therapeutic ways, 540 rules for formula data, 3785 rules for data of Chinese materia medica. Conclusion Different kinds of terminology concepts were normalized at different levels, at the same time, characteristics of individualized treatment based on syndrome differentiation were reserved. Appropriate pre-processing methods can be used in the reaserch of individualization and standardization of TCM syndrome differentiation clinical data and can provide support for data mining.