Institute of Applied Dermatology (IAD) was formed in 1999 as a not for profit organization under section 25 of Indian companies act. It conducts clinical research to integrate ayurveda and homeopathy with allopathy (biomedicine). Doctors trained in respective systems of medicine work together as a team and try to develop new integrative treatment for difficult to treat and neglected skin diseases. IAD has already seen success in lymphodema (lymphatic filariasis a neglected disease of the poor in India). Kerala State science council (KSCSTE) is funding our second program to develop integrative treatment for vitiligo (leucoderrma). Leucoderma study is a collaborative work with Medical Intelligence and Language Engineering laboratory (MILE) at Indian Institute of Sciences, Bangalore.

Although Ayurveda draws an international attention for its ability to treat chronic diseases with safety superior to biomedicine there is a greater need to locate published studies and pool them together. Researchers and patients all over the world also need synthesized information from Ayurveda on any given topic. However till now there was no single data base in world wide web that would provide such information. IAD has integrated the biomedical knowledge on systematic review and research methodology to clinical studies of Ayurveda to produce a program of systematic reviews not compromising on patient treatment principles of in this traditional system of medicine.

The aim of this project is to develop a comprehensive search strategy to locate scientific publications in any given Ayurveda topic and to map the existing databases containing ayurveda journal publications. We have developed a literature search procedure that can recover the great majority of articles on any given topic associated with Ayurveda. Under search section abstracts of papers published in Ayurveda journals can be located.

Also this data base contains synthesized information on treatment options available in ayurveda. These are developed using Vitiligo (leucoderma) as a model
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