IN GOOD HEALTH
“In the future, people will send photos of their tongue via WhatsApp,” says Lin Zhixiu. He’s not talking about the latest quirky internet craze or teenagers’ Snapchat habits. Lin is predicting how people will contact their doctors.
Lin is associate director of the school of Chinese medicine at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), a department whose very existence may seem surprising in an era when medicine is so closely tied to technology that computers powered by artificial intelligence are diagnosing patients in Shanghai hospitals. “Everyone from toddlers to 90-year-olds comes to our clinic for traditional medicine,” says Lin. “I also see a growing trend of young people opting for Chinese medicine, especially when they have things like a cold, cough, flu or pain such as back or neck pain.”
“In modern life we can’t just
