In the field of traditional health sciences in India, we are in a very early stage ofstandardization, digitization and transformation using technology. Today, foreveryone starting from students of traditional health sciences to practitionersand scientists, there is a lack of authentic, standardised andcomprehensive availability of and access to data. When data is available, it isas isolated islands strewn across the internet and the authenticity is notassured. There is also a lack of reusable design elements for anyone to build on- lack of reference data models, designs and architecture that can enable theiruse to build Super Apps.

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We are planning to build a technology platform that will be based on amicroservice architecture. Our institution has built several databases over thelast couple of decades - https://www.medicinalplants.in/,https://envis.frlht.org/ to name a couple and many other local databasesdistributed through Compact Discs, and there is a wealth of information in thepublic domain in the form of publications. These were built decades ago withlegacy technology and the pace of technology changes have rendered these tobe obsolete. We plan to consolidate all of this data and use our proposedtechnology platform of Citizen’s Portal to enable citizens to access the wealthof information that traditional health sciences offer in a consumable way

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SpecificObjectives:

- Develop aninteractive and collaborative technology platform that enables the collection,curation and dissemination  ofinformation related to medicinal plants from various sources. The portal willbe available on mobile devices and in local languages thus making it easy toengage citizens and local traditional health practitioners.

- Incrementally, aggregateand curate data on human, animal and plant health, from various sources -classical texts (Ayurveda, Siddha, Sowa-Rigpa, Unani), scientific papers,public domain science and medical databases as well as documented local healthtraditions, with the support of a network of dedicated community-basedorganisations.

Stakeholders/users:

- Members of local communities seeking cures forailments, information on local resources including the location of traditionalhealers and distribution of medicinal plants.

-Traditional health healers/practitioners - TDU andits partner organizations work with a very active network of healers. Thesepractitioners would greatly benefit from a platform where they can publishtheir knowledge with their Intellectual Property protected through prior artrules as well as access information from others.

- Knowledge holders - organizations like TDU, TKDL,CIKS. Organizations which have expertise in a particular area can takeownership of their data and ensure it is complete, curated and validated.  

- Community based organizations. TDU already workswith many CBOs.

- Health Departments of State Governments

- Veterinary Departments of State Governments

- Academia: Researchers, including from TDU willbenefit from having a single source of truth, making querying, maintaining andupdating it much easier. Students will benefit from having an authoritativereference.

- General public

Currentstatus:

The backend architecture and database for storingmedicinal plants data with their taxonomic, botanical, classical Ayurvedainformation along with formulations, treatments and references has beencreated. The data architecture for this was finalized after consultations withmany experts during the pilot phase of the National Mission on Biodiversity andHuman-Wellbeing.

An interactive user interface to search, query, accessthe data as well as a suggestions and information sharing interface have beencreated.

Efforts are on to curate and ingest the first set ofdata based on the BOTMAST list which has been cross referenced with the KEWdatabase as well as data from the IMPLAD and CIPA databases. Expected timelineof completion of this effort is December 2024.

A beta launch of the portal with the corefunctionality exposed is planned for January 2025.

Nextsteps:

The next phase of development in the CPMP consists of:

-       Development of the Local Health Traditions module

-       Development of site/utility specific applications

-       Integrating data from other databases in the TDUecosystem, like ENVIS, medicinal plants.in and homeremedy.in

-       Development of contribution and curation module, whichwill allow experts to directly curate and update data on the portal.

LocalHealth Traditions Module in CPMP:

This involves building the module wheredata collected from or contributed by local health practitioners or healers canbe databased in a common framework, enabling scaling of projects that documentinformation on local health traditions, similar to the HD Kote projectundertaken by TDU.  

This module would be built as part of theCPMP, so that it is closely integrated with the botanical, ayurvedic andclassical information on medicinal plants, ensuring that data is not replicatedand/or stored in silos and everybody has access to validated and updatedinformation.

The data architecture of the CPMP ensuresthat all data can be geographically referenced, at various levels ofgranularity. The data collected as part of the RIST project would be databasedin this module and made available through site specific and interactiveinterfaces.

The module design ensures multilingualoperation such that data from different sources can be stored in differentIndian languages in the same database. This will enable cross referencingacross different sites, even when data collection efforts are localized. Essentially,data from different sites can be searched on a single interface if required.

The Local Health Traditions module shallbe designed to ensure the accurate attribution of information on treatmentapproaches, protocols and related information to their identified sources suchthat healers, communities and individuals can be recognized, compensated forand take ownership of their local health traditions, while ensuring that theirintellectual property rights are documented and recognised.

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