Ayurveda and Traditional Medicine in the Contemporary Healthcare System: Scientific Evidence, Challenges, and Future Perspectives

Global health systems are beginning to integrate Ayurveda and other traditional systems of medicine, which are also recognized for their management of chronic diseases and their holistic approaches. While Ayurveda has an empirically based clinical tradition that is thousands of years old, integration into contemporary health care systems has been complex due to standardizing formulations, developing sufficient clinical and regulatory cross-system harmonizing documentation, and evidence-based practices. The current evidence is reviewed on Ayurveda and its various interventions, developing regulatory frameworks, contemporary models of health system integration, and potential research. The author conducted a systematic literature search from PubMed, Google Scholar, and AYUSH to review the literature relating to the Ayurveda and other traditional systems of medicine, clinical evidence, integration into modern systems of healthcare, and standardization published from 2014 to 2025. The evidence suggests there is an increasing body of literature, including randomized control trials (RCTs), that suggests positive outcomes from Ayurvedic interventions for chronic non communicable diseases (NCDs), such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, arthritis, and mental health. However, the author argues there are challenges from the integration of contemporary and traditional Ayurvedic practices. These challenges are often cited as the small sample sizes of the studies, heterogeneity in the study designs, and limited reporting of safety concerns. Major hurdles are U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) cross disciplinary credentialing and regulatory oversight, inadequate systems for monitoring adverse outcomes, discordance in the Ayurvedic and modern medicine research paradigms, and poor standardization of formulations with contemporary science.