Objective: Literature accumulated via long-time practices and basic theory research is rich in information concerning preventive and curative rules of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). It carries so much knowledge that could be taken as the sources for candidate drug searching in new TCM drug design. To screen and discover the prescriptions of new TCMs is the primary task in new drug design. Based on the status quo of prescription sources of new TCMs

this article aimed at analyzing some problems concerning prescriptions sources in many aspects of prescription screening

such as literature prescriptions

experiencing prescriptions and effective components prescriptions. Then

based on TCM knowledge and clinical practices

the article proposed the research strategy for discovery of new TCMs. To be specific

the research strategy included constructing analyzable structural database of prescriptions and clinical data

analyzing the composition rules of prescription via data mining (DM)

and determining the candidate prescriptions of new TCM design

combined with professional judgement and verification by clinical practices

to provide new thoughts for new drug design of TCM.