ICTAM XI, the Eleventh International Congress on Traditional Asian Medicine, will be held in Singapore from 12 to 16 July 2027 under the theme "Efficacy, Evidence and Safety in the Practice of Asian Medicine." It is organised by the International Association for the Study of Traditional Asian Medicine (IASTAM), the leading community of scholars and practitioners studying the history and contemporary practice of Asian medicines.
The congress meets at a moment of shifting ground. The WHO's acknowledgement that around four billion people use traditional medicine, and its advocacy for evidence-based implementation, place these practices at the centre of the modern public health agenda. ICTAM XI asks what counts as evidence, how efficacy and safety are measured and understood in different medical communities, whose knowledge is legible within clinical, regulatory and evidentiary frameworks — and what is gained or lost when living knowledge is translated into them. New research tools, from AI and digital methods to frameworks for indigenous knowledge sovereignty, are part of the conversation.
Singapore sits at the crossroads of two millennia of trans-Asian medical exchange, visible in its botanical institutions, gardens, kitchens, clinics and hawker centres where Peranakan, Malay, Chinese, Indian and Eurasian foodways carry medicinal logics of warming and cooling foods, tonic soups and herbal teas. The congress will bring heritage communities, practitioners, textual scholars, WHO delegates and regional health ministers, pharmacologists, epidemiologists, data scientists and graduate students into dialogue across Ayurveda, Chinese and East Asian medicine, Southeast Asian and Malay traditions and Himalayan/Tibetan medicine.
Sessions are designed to be dialogic: 90-minute chaired panels with 4–6 presenters in formats including Paper Panels (15-minute papers), Source Panels (10-minute introductions to a single primary source), Roundtables, Short-Form Video submissions and open Fishbowl Dialogues. Thirteen expanded panels bridge scholarship and practice, covering bioethics and regulation, clinical practice, observational studies, global commodity chains, digital transformation, cross-cultural transmission, environmental justice, prevention and treatment paradigms, historical ontology, nationalism and standardisation, religion and spirituality, and ageing populations.
Call for Papers: abstracts of up to 300 words (methods, key questions, preferred format) are invited through the ConfTool submission portal. The deadline has been extended to 31 October 2026, with notifications by December 2026. One submission per person; organised panels are submitted by a single organiser. Practical workshops of 90 minutes or 3 hours may also be proposed — those meeting Singapore guidelines can count toward TCM Continuing Education Units (CEU). Enquiries: iastam.comms@gmail.com; workshops: James Flowers (jimflowers@khu.ac.kr).
