Development of Ontology Based Framework for Drug Formulations of Traditional Unani Medicines

The proposed project will develop an ontology based knowledge management framework (KMF) for preservation of drug formulations of Traditional Unani Medicines. Whereas ontology is a formal specification of concepts, properties and relationships of concepts in any problem domain. The domain ont

Project Title

Development of Ontology Based Framework for Drug Formulations of Traditional Unani Medicines

Project Area of Specialization

Artificial Intelligence

Project Summary

The proposed project will develop an ontology based knowledge management framework (KMF) for preservation of drug formulations of Traditional Unani Medicines. Whereas ontology is a formal specification of concepts, properties and relationships of concepts in any problem domain.

The domain ontology of Unani Medicines will generally include underlying core concepts about philosophy and therapeutic principles, symptoms and diseases, methods of diagnosis and treatment. Main focus of the ontology will be to provide a framework for preservation and management of knowledge about various data aspects related to Unani drug formulations, their manufacturing processes and the raw materials they are composed of, mostly plants, however few animal and mineral sources are also used. Aspects such as their scientific names, references, parts of materials used, effectiveness in disease and related organ of the human body, active ingredients and chemical composition, their toxicity will have special focus.

Project Objectives

Goal: To model and preserve unstructured Traditional Unani Medicines knowledge with the following objectives

• To establish scientific basis for preservation, validation, dissemination and modernization of Traditional Unani Medicines knowledge, in general.
• To identify, capture, preserve and share knowledge about drug formulations of Traditional Unani Medicines, in specific.

To develop a knowledge base of Traditional Unani Medicines drug formulations

Project Implementation Method

Development of ontology will follow the methodology with given steps:

1. Training: The scientific personnel will get training from domain experts on the basic concepts and terminologies of Traditional Unani Medicines to get an overview of the problem domain. Typical concepts are related to theory and practice of Unani Medicines, like principles and therapies, diagnosis, treatment methods, diseases and symptoms, causes of illness, drug ingredients and formulations etc. The scientific personnel will also be trained by PI, Co-PI and online resources on the science of semantic technologies focusing on ontology development methodologies and knowledge management frameworks.
2. Classes (Concepts) Identification: Classes (concepts) will be extracted from widely used traditional Unani medicines reference books which are officially endorsed by domain experts and Pakistan Tibbi Council (PTC), Ministry of Health. The concepts to be enumerated in this knowledge domain particularly covers information of Traditional Unani Medicines drugs, their raw materials, properties, formulations, indication, preparation method, usage and dosage etc. All the defined concepts will later be used in the knowledge base and linked to the relevant information when replying the user queries.
3. Class Hierarchy Identification: In this step parent/child relationships of classes will be assigned to make a hierarchy, e.g. concepts of ‘Syrup’ and ‘Tablet’ can be defined as two subclasses of concept of ‘DrugType’.
4. Data and Object Properties Identification: There are 2 different types of properties to be identified, i.e. data and object properties. The object properties will be identified for description of association of related classes (concepts) in an ontology. E.g., the ‘DrugFormulation’ class has 5 object properties: hasDrugType, hasTaste, hasDosage, hasDrugIngredient, and hasCureForDisease. These are used to relate the ‘DrugFormulation’ class to the ‘DrugType’, ‘DrugTaste’, ‘DrugDosage’, ‘DrugIngredient’ and ‘CureForDisease’ classes respectively. Whereas the data properties will be used to describe the data type of the classes such as char, string, integer, bool etc. e.g. data property of ‘DrugType’ class is string, whose values can be ‘Syrup’, ‘Tablet’ etc. All the object and data properties deliver more information about class of DrugFormulation.
5. Ontology Review: The proposed ontology will be reviewed by domain experts to check redundancy, missing concepts, narrow and broad concepts, validity of hierarchy, validity of data and object properties etc.
6. Development of Knowledgebase: In this step, the ontology schema will be exported from protégé into RDF/XML format that will be used to generate NoSQL database server in order to store and access data for. After the database creation process, the tool allows creation of the knowledge base.

Benefits of the Project

• Traditional Medicines Pharma Industry
• Traditional Medicines Practitioners (locally known as Hakeem)
• Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP), Ministry of Health.
• IT industry for the development of knowledge based applications for traditional medicines

Herb Growers, Herb Collector & Sellers, Botanist, Researchers, Patients, General Users

Technical Details of Final Deliverable

The output of the project will be a formal ontology that will cover the core concepts and their relationships for the domain of Traditional Unani Medicines focusing on Unani drug formulations. Developed ontology will be available in an online public repository as soon as it gets ready. Ontology will act as a backbone for the field of Traditional Unani Medicines Informatics, and an array of knowledge based applications can be built based on that to be used by Traditional Unani Medicines pharmaceutical industry, herbal practitioners, regulatory authorities, botanists and medical researchers, patients and general users. It will ultimately leads to preservation, validation and modernization of Unani Medicines according to evidence based medicines. Eventually this will lead to inclusion of Traditional Unani Medicines in the national and international healthcare streams.

Final Deliverable of the Project

Software System

Core Industry

Agriculture

Other Industries

IT , Medical

Core Technology

Big Data

Other Technologies

Internet of Things (IoT)

Sustainable Development Goals

Good Health and Well-Being for People

Required Resources

If you need this project, please contact me on contact@adikhanofficial.com