ICMR Spurs Digital India Plan With Online Reference Formats For All Its Scientific Information

Bengaluru, 23 Oct 2018: In a major effort to make all scientific information available in a digital form, the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) is now making available all its scientific information for online referencing. This specifically includes its two recent publications: Quality Standards of Indian Medicinal Plants: Volume 16 and the Safety Reviews on Selected Indian Medicinal Plants: Volume 1. 

This according to the ICMR is in line with the Digital India initiatives. With the growing consumers interest in using naturals and the regulatory provisions that have been put in place for supplements and nutraceuticals these publications are seen to be useful and meet the needs of the stakeholders as well as regulators. 

Reviewing the Quality Standards of Indian Medicinal Plants brought out by the Medicinal Plants Division, ICMR, 2018 Dr DBA Narayana, pharma consultant said that the authentic scientific information can lead to development of specifications for selected Indian medicinal plants. 

A suggestion to make such publications digitally accessible has been given earlier. Now ICMR states that these publications would soon be available in a digital form for online referencing. Scientific community would look for the day when this would be announced, he added. 

Quality Standards of Indian Medicinal Plants contains monographs on 30 Indian medicinal plants apart from 6 appendices. A list providing the contents of earlier 15 editions and a clear descriptor of each monograph is provided. It also provides a combined index of all the monographs published in earlier editions 1 to 15 for ease of referring for a particular plant or its monographs. Other indices namely Index III giving other names of the plant, Index I giving botanical names, index II giving chemical constituents likewise makes it practical, he said. 

Some of the important plants covered through the detailed monographs are Anacyclus pyrethrum, Borasis flabellifer, Cocus mucifera, Ficus racemose, Gymnema sylvestre, Lobelia, Nelumbo nucifera, Punica granatum to name a few. 

Coming to the Safety Reviews on Selected Indian Medicinal Plants– Volume 1, also by the ICMR Medicinal Plants Division, Dr. Narayana said that 75 Indian medicinal plants which in itself is a huge data base provides tabulated information on human clinical trials among others. 

In case of medicinal plants additional challenges were faced to document information from Traditional Authoritative Texts and provide their English meaning or transliterations as many of the authoritative texts are in languages like Sanskrit, Urdu, and Persian. The scientific approach of these traditional systems of health care differed from the reductionist contemporary biomedical science which contributed to additional challenges to understand the safety profiles, he noted. 

Providing the history of medicinal use with references to the authoritative texts verse and their translation is a rich addition that speaks volumes of the history of safe use documentation in India. The book has a number of easy tools through the 10 indices for quick references like index of effect on drug metabolizing enzymes, adverse effects reported in clinical studies and bioactive phyto constituents. However there is not much information on dose, processes used during studies like infusion, decoction, extracts to name a few which is a need for any evaluator, he said.Pharmabiz