On January 23, 2026, the Third ITMCTR Advisory Group Conference was successfully held in Beijing. The conference was conducted in a hybrid online and offline format, with expert representatives from 7 countries and regions including the World Health Organization (WHO), Canada, Brazil, Austria, Malaysia, Pakistan and China in attendance. In addition to the members of the ITMCTR Expert Advisory Committee, the conference specially invited Dr.Sungchol KIM, Head of the Traditional, Complementary and Integrative Medicine Unit, WHO, Mr. Ghassan KARAM, Project Manager of the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (WHO ICTRP), and Prof. An-Wen CHAN, Chairman of the WHO ICTRP Expert Advisory Committee from the University of Toronto, Canada. Prof.Luqi HUANG, President of the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences and Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, Mr. Zhendou WU, Director-General of the Department of International Cooperation of the National Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine (NATCM), Mr. Zhongming MA, Deputy Director-General of the Department of Science and Technology of NATCM, and Mr. Yue QIU, Director of the Traditional Chinese Medicine Science and Technology Division of the Department of Science and Technology of NATCM, also attended the conference. The conference was chaired by Prof. Qi ZHANG, Chair of the ITMCTR Expert Advisory Committee.
In the speech session, Prof. HUANG Luqi systematically reviewed the development positioning and phased progress of ITMCTR as the world’s first registration platform themed on traditional medicine. He stated that the inclusion of ITMCTR in the WHO Global Traditional Medicine Strategy 2025–2034 marks the international community’s high attention to the evidence-based research, scientific research standardization and regulatory compliance system construction of traditional medicine. He pointed out that the Advisory Group plays an important role as a strategic think tank and an international communication bridge in the development of the platform, and expressed the expectation that the participating experts will continue to build consensus and jointly promote the standardization and high-quality development of clinical research on traditional medicine.
In the thematic report session, the ITMCTR administrator delivered an annual work report. In 2025, the platform’s operational efficiency and international influence were continuously enhanced: the cumulative number of registered projects with issued registration numbers exceeded 7,800, covering 19 countries and regions, and the annual visit volume of the official website reached 4.61 million; the construction of the review team advanced steadily with its capacity continuously expanded; the intelligent level of registration and review was consistently improved. Meanwhile, the first Traditional Medicine Evidence Summit (TES) – the platform’s flagship academic conference – was successfully held, and a multi-center clinical research collaboration network was established. Through academic exchanges and institutional innovation, the platform has guided researchers to establish the scientific research concept of standardized registration and whole-process management, and promoted the standardized generation and effective dissemination of high-quality evidence.
The participating experts fully affirmed the phased achievements of ITMCTR in terms of registration scale, international cooperation, review system construction and academic leadership. They suggested further strengthening the international publicity and promotion of the platform, continuously deepening communication and collaboration with WHO ICTRP and other primary registration platforms, and attracting more high-quality clinical research on traditional medicine to register through ITMCTR.

Group Photo of Conference Participants