DATA MINING

and high p~rformance computing. The data mining has been ~sad In the
medical domain for other purpose like to improve the decision making such
as d.lagnostic and prognostic problems related to sampraptl, sadhyasadhyatwa,
nidsnspanchaka of ~arious disorders. For better data analysis data mining
and decision support
.
can be integrated. The task
.
of detecting associations
between risk factors and outcomes In the medical area is a difficult work even
for experienced biomedical researcher or health care manager. Data mining
usage has helped clinicians to improve their health service by assisting in
detecting regularities, trends, and unexpected events from the data.
The data that can be captured by a patient record are classified in three
groups: ., structured data, semi-structured data, and unstructured data. Data
mining ar d knowledge discovery technique~ based on rule induction are
important to analyze the growing size of cli.nical data.

IMPORTANCE OF IT
Many·developed countries have announced initiatives to moderni~e their
health care systems with investments in health information technology (IT).
The goal of these initiatives is to use technology to improve the health care
system by reducing costs, increasing patient safety and improving quality of
care. Improving health care is a common goal for these countries, but there
are wide disparities in the success with which nations have pursued this goal
Some of the major benefits from modernizing our health care system are
. expected to come from the improvements in medical resea·rch that it will enable.
For example, medical researchers will be able to use rapid-learning health
networks to determine the effectiveness of a particular treatment for a certain
population or to discover harmful side-effects _of a drug. While some of this
research will occur in the private sector.

ESTABLISHED DATABASE SERVICES

· Many countries has taken initiative for establishing research database
services especially in the field of various medical sciences. For example,
1. PubMed- by us Govt.
2. Ayush data portal-by Govt. Of India
3. National information services - by Govt. Of India
4. Ohara portal-by Govt. Of India

164 .
-
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY AND MEDICAL STATISTICS

5. Shodhganga- by Tilak Maharashtra Vldyapeeth With Others

6. National Electronic Clinical Trials and Research (NECTAR) By Us Govt.
7. NCBI annotated online database - By Us Govt.
8. Research management Information system- Govt. Of India etc.
, INTRODUCTION TO OHARA
Digital Helpline for Avurveda Research Articles I.DHAB8l
www.dharaonline.org/

DHARA is the acronym for Digital Helpline for Ayurveda Research Articles.
It is the first comprehensive online Indexing service exclusively for research
articles published in the field of Ayurveda. DHARA is accessible online at
www.dharaonline.org. •

A lot of research that happens in Ayurveda languish in the form of

unpublished theses submissions or dissertations. Most of what gets published
remains inaccessible because they are published in journals in regional
languages or other India journals that are not indexed in international
databases, such as PubMed. DHARA is the first systematic and
comprehensive initiative to fill this gap.
At this point of time, DHARA has indexed research articles on Ayurveda
that have been published in more than 4100 journals worldwide. The total
number of indexed articles exceeds 52,000. Care has been taken to exclude
publications that would not qualify as research journals, such as magazines
and souvenirs. However, research journals which have not disclosed their
editorial policies in the field of Ayurveda have also been included due to
paucity of research publications dealing exclu~ively with Ayurveda. These
journals also publish high-quality articles occasionally. . .. .
The acronym DHA RA in Sanskrit means flow. It symbolizes the . fac11itat1on
.
of the free fIow of .in formation on research
· . . . .in· Ayurveda. The DHARA proiect
.
w an off shoot -of a collaborative InitIatIve between Central Council . for
as
Research .in Ayurve d'ic Sciences (CC RAS), New Delhi, The Ayurved1c Trust
(SAMA)
.
(AVT) Coimbatore, an d Swiss Ayurveda Medic.al · .Apademy
. •,
. ' d SAMA .1s wor k'ng1 . for the official recognition of Ayuryeda
. in
Sw1•tzerlan d. · the wa.ke of a constitutional
· referendum in favor· ofe
Sw1tzerlan in and Alternaiive Medicine from the Swiss Governm~:'·; ;:
Complementary . CCRAS A. \/T and SAMA was ,n,t,at
tripartite collabor3 t.10 n between , , -·- - - - -

- 165

,.
 DATAMININ
of meta analysis an_ d systematic r ~
f nerating repor ts ews f
the goal o ge. urveda. It was hoped that this data would help to show o
research done in Ay 'd -based medical system in Switzerland. Off~~e
da as an ev1 ence . ic1a1
Ayurve . d . Switzerland is expected to create a favorable i
nition of Ayurve a in rnpact
rec0 9 ts of the western world, and therefore this inir .
in Europe and other par . iat,ve
.. 'f'cance for Ayurveda at the global level.
assumes s1gm 1 .
. d that systematic access to published research on Ayun"'
It was reaI1ze ' v0da
I

. •te to explore·the feasibility of meta-analyses and system t·

was a prerequ1s1 . a1c
. Such a resource was not available and hence the task of building
reviews. . a
comprehensive database that wiJI allow systematic access to published
research on Ayurveda was taken up by AVT Institute for Advanced Research
{AVTAR), the research wing of The Ayurvedic Trust with _ financial assistance
from CCRAS. The scope for the tripartite initiative between CCRAS, AVT,
and SAMA to generate meta-analyses and systematic reviews on published
research in Ayurveda will be explored in the future.
Less than 10% of the articles indexed in OHARA can be retrieved using
keyword Ayurveda in international databases. Thus, OHARA provides a first
of its kind resource to access research papers published on Ayurveda in a
comprehensive manner.
Nearly 1 million articles were indexed in PubMed in the year 2010. In
comparison,. the number of articles indexed and identified as related to
Ayurveda in PubMed was around 240. About 50, 000 articles were indexed
from the field of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM). Chinese
medicine alone contributed 6000 articles in 201 o, and this number makes up
the entire collection of research articles on Ayurveda in OHARA database.
About 1SOO articles on Acupuncture were inde~ed in PubMed. OHARA has
. ~ndexed 4123 articles on Ayurveda in 201 0 compared with the 3780 indexed
in PubMed, out of which only 240 are identified as related to Ayurveda.

More ~an pro~iding access to published research on Ayurveda, OHARA

also makes 1t_poss1ble to do a comprehensive gap analysis with reference to
the current status of research in Ayurveda.
• FEATURES
. :h_e web architecture of DHARA has been designed keeping in mi nd ·
fam1hanty of users with popular databases and . d . . s The main
features of DHARA include the in exmg service .

166
..
 y AND MEDICAL STATISTICS
EARCH METHODOLO
R~s 'Id Keyword Search Option, .
1. W1 h 'th Boolean Operators,
Advanced Searc w1
z, .
Search Field Tags,
3. . h Controlled Vocabulary, .
Limiting Search wit d -search or in alphabt::ttcal
4. I Area for listing journals by keywor
5. Journa s . . f ation on journals,
order to access basic tn orn, b k yword search or in alphabetical
Authors area for listing authors y e
6. - o search articles by author names,
order t - (UR Ls) that can be stored for future
Building Uniform Resource Locators
1.
use,
s. Options for sorting search results, and -
9_ Exporting the search results as text file. (

FUTURE
It ·is hoped that OHARA will serve as a national and international resource
base for reviewing and improvising research initiatives and publication in the
field of Ayurveda. OHARA will bring ~isibility to many journals published in
the field of Ayurveda from India. This means increased access to the articles
published in these journals and in turn scope for critical review and feedback.
This can have a positive impact on the quality of research publications in
Ayurveda.
Although the foundation has been laid for setting up a resource for-
indexing research papers published in the field of Ayurveda, it will be quite a
challenge to keep the database updated and engaged in other maintenance
tasks. All this would be possible only if funding is available. OHARA can serve
as a driving force for journals on Ayurveda to improve the quality of editorial
work and for researchers to not only publish but al_ so improve the quality of
_their research work. The OHARA database makes it possible to pub-lish -
)
systematic reviews of prior work and this can help in setting priorities for
future research in Ayurveda.
Apart from the available services, options to automatically list the related
d articles, other articles by same author and controlled vocabulary search for
n Ayurvedic terminology will be integrated into the OHARA database in the
near future. ·

167
--------------------~DATAM
AN INTRODUCTION TO PubMed
www.pubmed,gOY
What is PubMed?
PubMed Is the National Library of Medicine's search service that .
access to: · · P~,
MEDLINE: an international bibliographic database of over 4600 bi omed1ca1
journals from1966-present.
PreME~LINE: new records are added dally; will appear with ~he tag [MEDLINE
record in progress]. PubMed also 1Inks to molecular biology dat b
. . S a ases
(Nucleotide, Protein, Genome, Pop et).
Searching research
4.
PubMed may- be searched by entering one or more

keywords or phrases s.
Medi_cal Subject Headings (MeSH}
Subheadings
Major Topic.
MeSH Subheadings
Command Language 6.
Title Word Search
7
Author Search
Preview/Index
Journal Name
Publication Type,
certain type or methodology
Clinical Subset
drug therapy search
Only Items with Abstracts
Advanteges/importance
1. Pubm~d is powerful service which allows users to limit retrieval to subsets
within the
ME~LINE database such as AIDS, AIM (Abridged Index Medicus),

-------~-----------~
Nursing, Cancer,

168
- ·. AESEARCH Ml=THODOLOGY AND MEDICAL STATISTICS
Complementary M~dlcine and Dental. AIM limits retrieval to a subset of
about 120 core clinical joumals - compared to the nearly 4,000 in the·
MEDLINE database!
2. A helpful PubMed feature is the ability to find documents that are similar
to a document which you find of Interest. To retrieve related articles for a
given record,
3. foreign language articles will appear even if your original search was
limited to English only.
The Related Articles feature Is a good way to discover synonymous/
related concepts that you may not have considered in your original
strategy.
4. The History function keeps track of your searches and numbers them,
allowing you to go.backto earlier s~arches and combine or modifythem.
5. The Journals database can be searched used the journal title, MEDLINE
abbreviations, NLMID, OR ISSN. The database includes journals 11
in
databases (e.g. PubMed, Nucleoti.de, Protein). Linking retrieves a Table
of Contents" type listing starting with the most recent issue of the journal.
This can serve as a curr~nt awareness service
The Clinical Queries search mode is designed with clin~cians i~ mind. It
6. works only for diagnosis, etiology, therapy and prognosis questions.
Note: PubMed must be accessed through . . .
7. . I 'h aov/entrez/auery.fcg1?otool=u1cli.b
b,ttp;!'.fwWW,ncb1.n m.rn -·- .
DISADVANTAGES t'II only available in print format. Check
, tant journals are s I
• .Many ,mpor . Online Holdings information .
.UICCAT for Print and . 1996 will not be available onllne.
' Most journal articles written prior to
,vusH RESEARCH PORTAL I . meant for dis•eminatlng the informatit
HResearch Porta is dates purely meant or
The AVUS USH and the current research ~P I Y research articles,
elated to the AY U rs can search AYUSH t~rm1no t~ge 'AYurveda, yoga,
• rpose se h ·nformat1on in · ·th
1cadem1c pu . · also searc I d'sciplines of science w,
>urnals etc. You csa~ddha and Homeopathydetfc n~~mental research.
· , i 1 ' d g an u "'·
aturopathY, unan ' .. · pre-clinical, ru __________
1
iformation about cl1n1ca '
'169