How AI Is Revolutionizing Traditional Chinese Medicine with Huawei’s Pangu Model

Introduction

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has a rich historical legacy, and its integration with modern AI and cloud computing promises innovative breakthroughs. The TianShiLi Digital Herbal project, led by Wang Wenjia and his team, showcases this fusion.

Model Foundation

The team identified Huawei Cloud’s Pangu large‑model as the core solution. Pangu offers a three‑layer architecture: L0 with five foundational models, L1 industry‑specific models, and L2 scenario models. Building on the Pangu language model and the Pangu molecular model, they created the Digital Herbal TCM model.

Data Scale

The model incorporates over 1,000 ancient TCM books, 90,000 prescriptions, 40,000 proprietary medicines, 40 million literature abstracts, 3 million natural products, 100,000 clinical cases, and 160,000 patents and pharmacopeia guidelines.

Core Capabilities

Leveraging Pangu’s features, the Digital Herbal model provides four interaction modes: intelligent Q&A, interactive computing, document generation, and smart applications. These support comprehensive R&D assistance, from mechanism analysis to formulation innovation, covering digital drug development, intelligent diagnosis, and smart services.

Application Scenarios

Digital drug R&D: evidence extraction, decision support, and efficiency improvement for “from disease to formula” and “from formula to disease” workflows.

Intelligent TCM diagnosis: AI‑driven prescription recommendation in hospitals and pharmacies for precise medication.

Smart drug services: Enhancing production intelligence and therapeutic precision, supporting broader ecosystem use cases.

Technical Highlights

The language model contains 38 billion parameters, pretrained on extensive TCM texts, combined with vector retrieval and multi‑scenario fine‑tuning. The computational model pretrained billions of molecular structures and was fine‑tuned with 3.5 million natural product molecules, enabling accurate molecular representation, property prediction, and rapid compound screening.

In practice, the model delivers fast search responses, improves data acquisition and processing efficiency, and enhances user experience.

Case Study: Innovative Sugar‑Kidney Formula

Using the platform, the team screened classic and modern TCM formulas, generating seven candidate cores through interactive computing. After deep analysis, a final formula comprising ten herbs was selected, demonstrating the model’s power in discovering novel therapeutic combinations.

Awards and Impact

The Digital Herbal team won the bronze award in the enterprise track of the 2024 Huawei Developer Competition, highlighting the model’s technical excellence and industry relevance.

Future Outlook

With continued support from Huawei Cloud, the team plans to further refine the model, expand its capabilities across the full TCM lifecycle, and drive broader industry transformation.