Available online at www.sciencedirect.com ScienceDirect European Journal of Integrative Medicine 5 (2013) 465–468 Editorial Building the evidence for CAM—30 years on As well as accepting original research articles, the European Journal of Integrative Medicine are par- ticularly interested in receiving submissions of systematic reviews in the following areas – oncol- ogy, multiple morbidity, integrative interventions, health economics, safety, integrated health in developing countries and policy. In this final issue of 2013, there is a focus on the importance of evidence in CAM? Evidence takes many different forms. It can also vary greatly in its quality and how it is accepted by the scientific community, regulators and health policy makers and governments. Evidence based medicine has been defined as – “the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients.” [1]. It has a key role in clinical decision-making and consists of the now well-known hierarchy of evidence which is based on the strength of the different research methodologies used. The systematic review, being at the top of the evidence tree, is regarded as the gold standard for assessing the effects of treatments, followed by randomised controlled trials. However at the bottom of the tree, which arguably is where most available evidence sits, is clinical expert opinion and best practice. These latter forms of often anecdotal qualitative evidence are how- ever also important, because in the absence of clinical trial data, expert opinion and best practice may be all that exists; many conventional medicine interventions are delivered without the underpinning evidence from randomised controlled trials [2]. The Research Council for Complementary Medicine (RCCM) (www.rccm.org.uk), now into its 30th year, celebrated with a conference entitled ‘From Hierarchy of Evidence to Good Practice’ on the 25 September, 2013 at the Royal Society in London. The RCCM is a UK charity with research and its dis- semination as its key objective since its inception in 1983. This high profile London venue was chosen because of The Royal Society’s focus on science, having been instituted in the 1660s to ‘recognize, promote, and support excellence in science and to encourage the development and use of science for the benefit of humanity’. The past, present and future of research evidence in complementary and integrated medicine was delivered by various speakers including Professor George Lewith (Univer- sity of Southampton), Prof Sarah Stewart Brown (University of Warwick), Dr Karen Pilkington (University of Westminster) and Roger Newman-Turner (a founder member of the RCCM). Of increasing importance is the engagement of practitioners in research to build research capacity, as many research questions emerge from clinical practice and, conversely, research should inform practice. The evidence required for practice was pre- sented at the conference by the UK’s Advertising Standards Agency, and an informed debate was held with researchers and practitioners. The RCCM conference demonstrated how the evidence base for Complementary Medicine has substantially developed over the last 30 years and how the RCCM has played a vital role in education, research, and dissemination of research on safety and effectiveness in complementary medicine in the context of an integrated approach to health. The RCCM was the brain child of Dr. Richard Tonkin (now aged 98), who was a Consultant Physician at Westminster Hos- pital. On his initiative and that of the co-founder, Harold Wicks, who worked in communications, a council was assembled con- sisting of distinguished medical experts, academics, writers, CAM practitioners, and researchers to examine methodologies, and facilitate research in the field. In the following few years a series of conferences and workshops were held to develop research awareness in the CAM professions and ‘CAM aware- ness’ in the medical schools and universities. In 1986 the RCCM instituted perhaps the first journal in this field, Complementary Medical Research (a joint venture with the British library) which later developed in 1993 into Comple- mentary Therapies in Medicine (now another Elsevier journal). One of the RCCM’s most significant achievements had been attracting funding from the Department of Health to carry out systematic review and appraisal of CAM interventions in key NHS priority areas. Eighteen papers (12 systematic reviews and 6 papers on methods) were published in journals, 27 further reviews were published on the RCCM’s database CAMEOL. A total of 13 reviews were transferred to the National elec- tronic Library on CAM which has now been subsumed into the UK’s NHS Evidence service https://www.evidence.nhs.uk/. 1876-3820/$ – see front matter © 2013 Published by Elsevier GmbH. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eujim.2013.10.003