e-Roga is the first Disease Diagnosis application in the Information Technology field of Ayurveda. It helps the user to search the symptoms mentioned in the classical textbooks and the diseases in which they are present. The data is taken from NAMASTE portal, Ministry of AYUSH for the code generation, translation of the Ayurveda terms to contemporary key words. There are near to 3000 clinical conditions from Kaya Chikitsa, Shalya Tantra, Shalakya Tantra, etc. Listed clinical conditions consists of Lakshana ranging from 1 to 140 + signs and symptoms. An attempt has been made to minimize the synonyms (like chardi, vamana, vami, chardanam, vamathu, etc.) however the translation in English is being maintained. Task of condensing such terms is never ending phenomena and we keep updating that in coming days.
This application will also helps to generate National Ayurveda Morbidity Codes (NAMC) which is the need of the hour to minimize the diversified meaning of certain diseases across the nation.
To whom this App for:
This application is meant ONLY for Ayurveda Physicians, students of Ayurveda and Researchers of Ayurveda. Layman/ non-Ayurvedians, please excuse as it is not designed for your understanding without fundamental knowledge of Ayurveda.
How to use the App:
There are three sections in the application:
Search by Disease:
Here the user can type the first few letters of the disease of interest to select the disease name from the drop-down box. You can prefer either typing Sanskrit or English letters but atleast 3 letters are required to show the possible words in the drop down box. After selecting the disease term click on the submit button. You will be taken to the page whereby clicking on the down arrow you can explore the symptoms present in that specific disease. Click on the down arrow button to expand and see all the other lakshanas of the selected diseases. You can select 2 diseases by clicking on “+” and compare their respective symptoms in the given result.
Search by Symptoms- Symptomatology
This is the uniqueness of this application. You can click on the drop-down box to select the symptoms by typing first few letters (atleast 3) either by typing Sanskrit letters or in English (and not both at onetime). It will be better to prefer English so that many of the synonyms can be minimised. After selecting the term, click on ‘submit’ and you will be taken to result page to see the conditions where the selected sign/ symptom is present.
Going further, you can keep adding signs/ symptoms by clicking on “+” to see all those signs / symptoms present in clinical condition/s.
Another uniqueness of this application is that, you can select the diseases for the given symptoms based on their speciality. Ex. Say for condition ‘fever’, you can mark clinical specialized areas like: Kaya Chikitsa, Shalya Tantra etc and the application will through out the result where fever is present as symptom for the diseases of that speciality. You can also search the symptom as Purvarupa , Rupa or as an Upadrava for better clinical decision making.
NAM code generator:
In this section, you can generate the National Ayurveda Morbidity Code for the disease of your choice.
About dataset:
There are total of 2889 clinical conditions with Kaya chikitsa diseases being 793 followed by Shalya tantra 360 and Shalakya Tantra conditions are 358.
Users can search single clinical entity or combination of symptoms
There are total of 290 conditions where Jwara is a symptom.
Combination of Jwara and Atisara symptoms will give 33 clinical conditions.
Jwara, Atisara and Chardi will result in 20 conditions
Jwara, Trushna, Atisara and Chardi will through 6 clinical conditions
Jwara, Daha, Chardi, Trushna, and Atisara will give 3 conditions.
Users can search specific symptom or combinations of symptoms with special reference to Department.
Ex.: Total conditions with Jwara is 230, however, if these conditions are filtered by Kaya chikitsa department (diseases that are more likely seen in that clinical Department), then the output result will be 78. Jwara and Shalya Tantra combination will be 29 clinical conditions.
A step further, user can also search the symptom/s with special reference to Avastha
Ex. Out of 230 Jwara clinical conditions, selecting ‘purvarupa’ with Jwara will cut down the results to 3 and Jwara as aristha lakshana will be 2 clinical conditions.
Moving further, you can choose Jwara with department and Avastha also.
Ex. Jwara, Shalya, Rupavastha will give 26 clinical conditions.
Limitations of the App:
You can search clinical conditions by specific criteria either in English or by typing Sanskrit words in English. The result may not be the same for the same contemporary term.
Ex. For word ‘Jwara’, there are 230 clinical conditions but for ‘Fever’ there are 231
There is no hierarchy in the symptoms displayed for any given disease in the application
There is no severity for any of the clinical symptoms mentioned in the application and it is left to the discretion of the physician / researcher/ student of Ayurveda.
Many of the synonyms have been replaced with broader terms however still there are many words which are not substituted.
Ex: for the search ‘shira shula’ you will get 10 results and if ‘shira ruja’ is searched, the output will be 30 and for headache there are 80 outcomes.
Your search for the word ‘kara daha’ may be present as ‘pani daha’ so try all possible words before making clinical decision.
Certain words like ‘anala’ is mentioned for ‘agni’ and ‘sleshma’ for ‘kapha’. Hence you should search for such words too for better outcome of the results.
About Us:
Dr.Prasanna Kulkarni, currently working as Professor and HOD in the Department of Swasthavritta at Sri Kalabyraveswara Swamy Ayurvedic Medical College Hospital & Research Centre, Bangalore having the vast experience of 18 plus years of clinical practice and teaching. He runs his clinical practice at ‘Atharva AyurTech Healthcare center’. He is graduated from TMAE’s Ayurvedic Medical College, Hospet and Postgraduate in the Department of Swasthavritta from SDM college of Ayurveda, Hassan in the year 2004. He also holds Postgraduate Diploma in Data Science from prestigious International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore in the year 2021. From then onwards he started applying his understanding of Information technology in the field of Ayurveda.
After launching of e-dravya app for medicinal herbs exploration, this e-Roga application has taken its birth and of course many more are in the pipeline.
Acknowledgement:
Heartful thanks to NAMASTE portal, Department of Ministry pf AYUSH, for providing such a data in public domain without which this application could have been extended for 2 years or more to compile the data from various textbooks of Ayurveda.
We thank his holiness Sri Sri Sowmyanatha Swamiji for his blessing. We are grateful to Dr.Kiran M Goud, Principal, SKAMC, Bangalore for his constant support. Thanks to Mr.Narendra for helping me to code using python language (helped me to get better insights of the compiled Data) and very special thanks to Mr.Niteen for developing this App and translating my thoughts and bringing them on your screen.
DISCLAIMER:
This application is meant for understanding the diseases through their expression of signs and symptoms. Clinical decision making based on the result in the application is at the own risk of the user. Request to cross check with the classical/ contemporary texts, history and clinical findings (including examination and investigation wherever required ) before taking any clinical judgement.
Hope the users will get benefited with this application. I know that this is not perfect disease diagnosis application in Ayurveda, but somewhere we need to start to reach near perfection and here is my starting point in the journey of Ayurveda Disease exploration.
Happy exploring the Diseases…