The social needs, disciplinary development and humanistic reflection has promoted the emergence and development of evidence-based medicine. Moreover, evidence-based medicine-problems oriented research, evidence based decision, transferring results to practice and outcome evaluation-continues to meet society demands, promote the development of discipline and show humanist concern. The application of evidence-based medicine has gradually extended from the field of clinical medicine to the public health, society, management, economy, policy research and education in the process of solving various problems. The high quality evidence has also been important to decision-making in these fields. Our study explored the emergence and development of evidence-based medicine from the perspective of social needs, disciplinary development and humanistic reflection for the first time.