The Inaugural Research Meeting of 2026 for the King’s Centre for Integrative Chinese Medicine (King’s CICM) was held on Monday, 2nd February, from 16:00 to 20:00 at the Denmark Hill Campus of King’s College London. Hosting two distinguished speakers, the meeting was moderated by Dr Min Zhang, the Centre’s Assistant Director.
Dr Qihe Xu, Director of King’s CICM, opened proceedings by warmly welcoming attendees. He framed the meeting’s focus on the integration of Modern Tongue Diagnostics (MTD) with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and reaffirmed the Centre’s mission to deliver globally impactful, clinically grounded research. Dr Xu highlighted the importance of collaboration with the wider Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) community and positioned the Centre’s work within the King’s Health Partners’ Strategy to 2030, which envisions the partnership as a “connector, capacity-builder, and creator of opportunity.”
Session 1: Introduction to Modern Tongue Diagnostics
The guest keynote was delivered by Prof Hongchun Yin, an Honorary Advisor to King’s CICM. Introduced by Dr Xu as an “extraordinary scholar”, Professor Yin presented An Introduction to MTD: Focusing on Heart Diseases. His talk provided a systematic overview of TCM tongue diagnosis and his innovations, outlining MTD’s potential role in cardiology. Following a presentation of clinical cases, Professor Yin expressed his commitment to collaborating with King’s CICM to rigorously investigate MTD’s specificity, sensitivity, and mechanisms using clinical studies, AI, and novel data science methodologies.
Session 2: Frontiers in Cooperative AI
Chaired by Dr Po-Wah So, the Centre’s Bioimaging and Phenomics Advisor, this session featured Dr Yali Du, Senior Lecturer at KCL. Dr Du presented her team’s work on developing safe and efficient cooperative multi-agent systems using reinforcement learning and large language models. She illustrated how this technical framework could pave the way for future intelligent teamwork of multi-agentic AI models.
Session 3 & 4: Interactive Dialogue and Strategic Discussion
Following each presentation, a dedicated Q&A session provided an opportunity for focused discussion on the topics raised.
The meeting then progressed to a strategic discussion, chaired by Prof Yanzhong Wang, Co-Director of King’s CICM. The dialogue centred on defining a collaborative research pathway to examine, elucidate, and enhance the specificity, sensitivity, and underlying mechanisms of MTD. A primary focus was the practical feasibility of applying AI technologies, including Dr Du’s cooperative AI models, to Prof. Yin’s MTD framework, with the shared goal of co-developing next-generation diagnostics.
Session 5: Closing and Networking
The formal agenda concluded with the presentation of honorary lecture certificates to the speakers and a group photograph. An informal discussion for interested attendees continued at a local pub. Through formal discussions and networking, the meeting facilitated direct dialogues between experts in TCM, biomedical science, data science, and cutting-edge AI technologies, and provided an excellent learning opportunity for students and training fellows. The core outcome was the identification of a concrete interdisciplinary opportunity: leveraging KHP’s scientific and technological expertise to analyse MTD datasets to catalyse innovation. King’s CICM will build on this initial interaction to develop working groups for joint research proposals and identify relevant cross-disciplinary funding opportunities.
PS: Ten KHP members and guests attended today’s meeting. Apologies were received from six King’s CICM faculty members. Although Dr Haotian Gu, Clinical Senior Lecturer and Honorary Consultant Clinical Scientist in Cardiac Imaging at St Thomas’ Hospital, could not attend today’s meeting, he met Professor Yin and Dr Xu at St Thomas’ Hospital last week.
Attendees of the Research Meeting on the 2nd Feb. 2026
- Guest Speaker Prof Hongchun Yin (殷鸿春), King’s CICM Honorary Advisor, founder of Modern MTD and Professor at the British Danhuang Academy. Prof. Yin graduated from Shandong University of TCM in 1988. He practised at Qingdao Hospital of TCM before arriving in the UK and practising here since 2001. As Dean of the International College of MTD, President of the International Association of MTD and a specially appointed TCM clinical expert at Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, Prof. Yin has trained over a thousand of healthcare practitioners worldwide. He is an Executive Board member of the World Federation of TCM and Advisor & Deputy Chair of the Academic Committee, the Federation of TCM Practitioners in the UK. Prof. Yin has published 3 MTD monographs, and his innovation is widely recognised, as illustrated by the following honours:
- 2023: The International Contribution to TCM Award – Book Prize, World Federation of Chinese Medicine Societies
- 2023: Alongside his MTD technologies, selected as a representative of the Chinese government’s “100 People, 100 Projects” exchange and demonstration initiative for overseas Chinese medical practitioners
- 2025: Awarded the Huatuo Medical Science Prize
- 2025: His MTD innovation was honoured by the World Health Organization as one of 21 top global “Health and Heritage Innovations”
- 2026: Recognised by an international committee convened by the New England Journal of TCM as one of 15 awardees of the Outstanding Global Contribution to TCM Award 2025.
- Guest attendee Dr Jun Xu (徐军): Deputy Director, Viable Acupuncture Technique Promotion Committee, World Federation of Acupuncture & Moxibustion Associations.
KHP Attendees (Alphabetic order)
- Miss Lu Chen (陈璐), PhD Candidate in TCM Interaction & Health Communication
- Dr Yali Du (杜雅丽): Senior Lecturer, Head of Distributed AI Group, Cooperative AI Lab, King’s College London, Turing Fellow, The Alan Turing Institute.
- Dr Po-Wah So: Reader in Biomedical Imaging and Spectroscopy; Head, Phenomics Lab, Department of Neuroimaging, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience.
- Mr Weichu Tang, BSc student, Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics
- Dr Xinhui Wang (王新慧), King’s CICM Visiting Fellow; Attending Physician, Department of Nephrology, Xiyuan Hospital, Chinese Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine, China.
- Prof Yanzhong Wang (王岩中): King’s CICM Co-Director (AI, Big Data and Clinical Research); Professor of Statistics in Population Health, Head of Medical Statistics.
- Dr Qihe Xu (徐启河): King’s CICM Director; Senior Lecturer in Renal Medicine & Pharmacology.
- Dr Min Zhang (张敏): King’s CICM Assistant Director; Senior Lecturer in Cardiovascular Biology.