Ayush ministry launches 5 key data portals, 4 publications on Ayurveda
06 Jul 2021
Union minister of Ayush Kiran Rijiju on Monday launched five portals containing data related to Ayurveda. He also released four publications at an online event, while emphasising that Ayush is going to play a big role in the National Digital Health Mission to provide health security to the people.
The five portals include the Chemical Trials Registry of India (CTRI) portals pertain to Ayurveda dataset, besides Ayush manuscripts, Research management information, Showcase of Ayurveda historical imprints and electronic Medical Heritage Accession. The four publications are related to the traditional Indian system of medicine. The minister lauded the collaborative efforts of ICMR and Archaeological Survey of India for these initiatives.
After the inclusion of dataset pertaining to Ayurveda in CTRI portal, the Ayurveda clinical trials would have worldwide visibility and will further the cause of strengthening Ayurvedic research. Similarly, SHAHI portal incorporates authentic resources and will be of immense help in showcasing historical veracity of Ayurveda. With the help of e-Medha portal anyone can have online access to more than 12,000 books. These books are related to Indian medical heritage and can be accessed through NIC’s e-granthalaya platform.
AMAR portal, which was also launched today, is a repository of Ayurveda, Yoga, Unani, Siddha and Sowa-Rigpa manuscripts and catalogues.
Another portal CCRAS - Research Management Information System or RMIS in short, is a research guidance platform.
While lauding the efforts of Ayush team in developing the portals, the minister said that Indian Digital Health Mission is going to be the biggest programme in the Indian health sector and every effort is being made to maximise the role of Ayush in it. He termed development of portals as revolutionary, robust and momentous and said that as Indians, we all should take pride in our national heritage, customs and traditions. There is a mindset to look down on traditional knowledge systems, referring to them as a thing of the past, or of no modern significance and unscientific. “We need to counter this and we need to celebrate our success in rediscovering our past, our national heritage and our traditional medicine system,” he said.
National research professor, Ayush, Bhusan Patwardhan termed the launching of portals as historic and said some recent findings of archaeology in Kashmir and Telangana are indicative of surgical interventions in India way back some 4,000 years. Vaidya Rajesh Kotecha, secretary, Ayush, said that in the last few years there has been trmendous efforts to access everything related to Ayush grid in digital form.
Ayurveda Dataset on Clinical Trial Registry of India (CTRI) is a primary register of clinical trials under the World Health Organisation’s International Clinical Trials Registry Platform. Creation of Ayurveda data set in CTRI facilitates the usage of Ayurveda terminologies to record clinical study based on Ayurveda interventions. This is a great step towards worldwide visibility for Ayurveda based clinical trials.
CCRAS-Research Management Information System is a collaborative effort of ICMR and CCRAS. This portal will be a one-stop solution for research and development in Ayurveda-based studies. Free of cost research guidance by experienced scientists, clinicians of Ayurveda can be availed through this portal. Research tools, reference material are also in place in this portal.
E-Medha (electronic Medical Heritage Accession) portal is an online public access catalog of more than 12,000 Indian medical heritage books available through NIC’s e-granthalaya platform.
AMAR (Ayush Manuscripts Advanced Repository) portal is of immense value and it has digitised information on rare and hard to find manuscripts and catalogues of Ayurveda, Yoga, Unani, Siddha, Sowa Rigpa in libraries or in individual collections across India or in other parts of the world.
SHAI (showcase of Ayurveda Historical Imprints) portal showcases inscriptions, archeo-botanical information, sculptures, philological sources and advanced archeo-genetic studies. This portal will be of tremendous use in understanding of Indian knowledge system with a focus on indigenous health care practices.
Apart from these five portals, the Ayush ministry released four publications, which include:
- Proceedings of international workshop on `Preservation and Promotion of SOWA-RIGPA in Asia’;
- Compendium of important cereals mentioned in Ayurveda-Series-1, volume-1;
- Ayurveda Sangraha: An important classical textbook of Ayurveda, which is mentioned in the Schedule 1 of Drugs and Cosmetics Act 1940. Up till now this book was available in Bengali language. Now it has been transliterated to Devanagari Script; and
- PathapathyaVinishcaya: An important book of Ayurveda which has details of diet and lifestyle.