In order to mediate the contradiction between the high quantity and low quality of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) clinical research, to avoid blind research and waste of resources, and to promote the benign development of TCM clinical research, we proposed carrying out health research priority setting on the TCM clinical research. This paper defined the main content of TCM clinical research and briefly introduced the research status of priority setting methods. We described a five-step process of the TCM priority setting research: setting the research scope and plan, establishing the working group, mapping the research field, identifying priority research areas, reporting, evaluating and updating the research. It is expected that this area will receive the attention of relevant researchers, policy makers and research funders.
With the increasingly prominent contradiction between limited health resources and the growing population, priority setting of health research, as a response, has received widespread attention from health systems worldwide. As the results of priority setting at different levels increase year by year, some questions in the results reporting are also constantly emerging. For example, the process of producing the results is vague, too dependent on individual subjective judgment, the participation of individual stakeholder groups is limited or lack of voice, unable to identify potential conflicts of interest, and so on. It does not only seriously affect the effectiveness and rationality of the results themselves, but also create intangible obstacles to their promotion and adoption. In 2019, BMC Medical Research Methodology published ‘Reporting guideline for priority setting of health research (REPRISE)’, which makes uniform specifications for more comprehensive and consistent reporting of results in priority areas. This paper interpreted the background, formulation process and key contents of the REPRISE guideline, with an aim to promote the application of the reporting guideline in China.