• Associate Professor, Teaching and Research Division
• Expert in Acupuncture and Neuroscience
• spzhang@hkbu.edu.hk

Dr. Zhang received his bachelor degree in Chinese medicine from the Guangzhou College of Traditional Chinese Medicine, now the Guangzhou University of Traditional Chinese Medicine in 1987. He then went to Australia and studied in the University of Sydney to obtain his PhD degree in neuroscience in 1993. He worked at the University of New South Wales as a post-doctoral research associate in sensory physiology, and then joined the University of Technology, Sydney as a lecturer in acupuncture in 1996. In 1998, he moved to the Hong Kong Baptist University and took part in establishing the first Chinese Medicine undergraduate program in Hong Kong. He served as the Director of Master of Acupuncture and Moxibustion Programme in 2015-2019, and developed the first course that integrated Chinese medicine health cultivation and lifestyle medicine in 2018. Dr. Zhang's current research areas include clinical trial study of acupuncture efficacy, pain management and TCM telehealth (e.g., non-invasive detection and management of diabetes using smartphones). He is also a seasoned practitioner of acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine. He is on the editorial committee of World Journal of Acupuncture-Moxibustion, Medicine, and Journal of Alternative, Complementary & Integrative Medicine.

Dr. Zhang’s greatest strength in scholarship lies in the scholarship of application, which focuses on the development and application of digital and tele-communication technologies to Chinese medicine based tele-healthcare and smart-healthcare, especially in response to the pandemics. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, Dr. Zhang has been fighting against the pandemics in the forefront as a Chinese medicine practitioner, a researcher and a scholar. He conducted a case-control study of COVID-19 tongue from the initial Wuhan patients, and promoted actively the technique he had developed for taking tongue image in TCM tele-medicine. For example, he published a high impact video on YouTube about the technique of tongue imaging, which had received over 10,000 views in seven months. Interestingly, the daily viewing rate of this video has been in tandem with the daily COVID-positive number in Hong Kong, suggesting that people in Hong Kong are using the video to learn how to take tongue picture for Chinese medicine diagnosis of COVID-19. He was interviewed by Radial Television Hong Kong (RTHK) for his work on smartphone tongue imaging. In August 2022, he organized the First International Conference on Traditional Chinese Medicine Tele-healthcare (1st ICTCMT), which was participated by over 5000 people from 17 countries with over 50 presentations online. This conference served as a milestone to celebrate the use of Chinese medicine during the pandemic internationally. Following the Conference, he edited the proceedings as a thematic book titled “Developing TCM Tele-Healthcare Strategies to Combat COVID-19 and Post COVID Conditions”.  He also founded the Tele-health Association for the Study of Traditional Chinese Medicine International (TASTCMI), to spearhead the development of TCM tele-healthcare internationally. He has served as the chairman of TASTCMI since August 2022.

Furthermore, Dr. Zhang’s scholarship of application is also evidenced in transforming and translating his research in community services and nurturing of students. For example, he has engaged students in community health services using digital health technologies, and guided students in award winning projects of digital health innovation.