A Baptist University academic says he hopes a framework can be established on promoting "food as medicine" in the primary healthcare system.

The university is hosting a two-day conference called FoodMed. Terence Lau, the university's Interim Chief Innovation Officer and chair of the conference, said Chinese medicine used many herbal components that people also consumed as food, such as ginseng.

Appearing on RTHK's Hong Kong Today programme, he was asked about the relationship to medicine, especially as there had previously been controversies in Hong Kong over naturopathic - or so-called holistic - treatments.

"We can enhance primary health by alleviating a lot of unhealthy conditions and food can also provide a lot of benefits for chronic diseases," he said. "We are not trying to replace the traditional, or western, medicine doctors. But I think it's another approach to enhance people's health."

Professor Lau also called for the greater use of technology in the field, especially when it came to data collection. He said Chinese medicine had a lot of heritage and the conference would be looking at better ways to utilise this.