From personalized medicine to person-centered and integrative health care

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Based primarily on patient needs and public demand, the concept and practice of 'integrative medicine' has gained increasing popularity and interest among health care professionals and academic research institutions. Coined by a German internist, the term 'integrative medicine' originally designated the integration of evidence-based forms of alternative or complementary treatments into conventional medicine. This idea gradually transformed into to a more general concept of integrative medicine, including the integration of different medical approaches, a new attention to the whole person and the practitioner-patient relationship, the specific issues of health, and new forms of inter-professional cooperation. This supplemental issue of Complementary Medicine Research presents an overview over a selection of research topics and projects from the Institute of Integrative Medicine whose aim is to develop an integrative and person-oriented approach to health care and medical education, and thus to contribute to the overall research focus of the Faculty of Health at the Witten/Herdecke University.