Current situation of International Organization for Standardization/Technical Committee 249 international standards of traditional Chinese medicine

Objective: To review the current situation and progress of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) international standards, standard projects and proposals in International Organization for Standardization (ISO)/ technical committee (TC) 249. Methods: ISO/TC 249 standards and standard projects on the ISO website were searched and new standard proposals information were collected from ISO/TC 249 National Mirror Committee in China. Then all the available data were summarized in 5 closely related items, including proposed time, proposed country, assigned working group (WG), current stage and classifification. Results: In ISO/TC 249, there were 2 international standards, 18 standard projects and 24 new standard proposals proposed in 2014. These 44 standard subjects increased year by year since 2011. Twenty-nine of them were proposed by China, 15 were assigned to WG 4, 36 were in preliminary and preparatory stage and 8 were categorized into 4 fifields, 7 groups and sub-groups based on International Classifification Standards. Conclusion: A rapid and steady development of international standardization in TCM can be observed in ISO/TC 249.