ICML 9

9º Congresso Mundial de Informação em Saúde e Bibliotecas

Salvador, Bahia - Brasil, 20 a 23 de setembro de 2005

BVS4

4ª Reunião de Coordenação Regional da BVS

19 e 20 de setembro de 2005

Expert System – an innovative tool for managing indian traditional medical knowledge

Participantes:
  • Librarian, Literary Research and Doc. Dept., C.R.I.S., CHENNAI-106  - India
  • Professor, Head of Dept. of Lib & Inf. SC., University of Madras, CHENNAI-5  - India
  • Project Officer, Literary Research and Documentation Dept., C.R.I.S.,CHENNAI-106.

The Technology offers a powerful tool to translate intellectual contributions into value-added information products, which could satisfy the specific requirements of each end user.

The transition of traditional Library to electronic Library represents a new means of extending and enhancing the value of information and knowledge. One such valuable knowledge is Siddha medical system, which is hidden in the form of Tamil poetries. The Siddha medical system is popular in TamilNadu to a certain extent but not elsewhere. That is due to the secretive nature of the ‘Siddhas’ who originated the Siddha medical knowledge. Most of the extremely valuable knowledge on Siddha medicine, which is found in the regional language of the Tamils is now gradually gaining popularity among the western countries and are being translated into English and Hindi.

The systematic organization of this valuable knowledge will prove to be extremely useful for the society. Hence the need for designing an Expert Syste m arose. Expert system facilitates organization of knowledge in such a manner, which fills up the gap of the absence of an expert in any field. An expert system with hypertext facility will be particularly useful in organizing knowledge in logical manner and facilitates storing if large amount of information with a very retrieval mechanism.

The most ancient Siddha medical system proves to be very effective system, especially for curing certain chronic diseases. Unfortunately, the expertise knowledge in this field was not properly organized, and written in the form of Tamil poetries, which are not understood by a layman. Hence it was decided that an expert system for Siddha medicine should be designed to be an effective tool for knowledge management. This article highlights how Expert system is used as an effective tool for managing Siddha medical knowledge.

This paper elucidates the system design of an Expert System for Siddha medical knowledge and it is based on the thesis awarded for Ph D degree for the first author of this article.