Dr Cheung Wai-lun, project director of the Health Bureau’s Chinese Medicine Hospital Project Office, said on Sunday that no such database currently existed and hoped the launch of the institute would help to fill that gap.

The Chinese Medicine Hospital of Hong Kong will open on December 11 and is intended to showcase TCM’s capabilities and to help train potential practitioners among the international community.

“When we are integrating Chinese and Western medicine, it remains a question whether the combination of the two kinds of medicines would lead to side effects. It would be problematic if we did not have such information,” he said.

“Hong Kong will work on co-developing a database on this front with other regions and countries.”

Such research outcomes would ensure the medical community had a better understanding of how the two sides could collaborate to deliver the best outcomes, Cheung said.