Project Bona fide

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Inspiration

We are born and bred in the beautiful island of Sri Lanka. Our country has a great history and tradition which covers different industries. Out of all, indigenous medicine holds a valuable place and most of the people have tried and benefited from these remedies at some point in their lives. Apart from Sri Lanka, most of the Asian countries hold such treasures in their communities and we are positive that it is not a scenario limited to one country or one region but to the whole world.

At a time in which the whole world turned upside down due to COVID-19 and when vaccines and pills abandoned us, most of the communities around the world turned to remedies that are indigenous to them and passed on from generation to generation. These home remedies are improving the immunity of thousands of people around the world right now and act as a life savior for many who are already infected. Nevertheless, we could see that the disparity between the recognition given to these home remedies and medical remedies is huge, mainly due to the lack of scientific evidence to prove its effectiveness. However, the lack of scientific evidence does not necessarily question the effectiveness of these home remedies.

It is high time that these natural remedies around the world get into the limelight and be included in an open-source platform where people from all over the world can contribute, share, validate and use the traditional non-therapeutic remedies to prevent or reduce the effect of COVID19.

We expect this solution to be an opportunity to promote research and clinical experiments relating to such remedies. Thus, it would benefit the research community and general public; collating all these scattered traditional medicinal knowledge into a single database. As we speak of a virus that can not be defeated by pharmaceutical medicines available around the world, we believe it is worth giving a shot.

Defining the design problem

The main issue for evidence-based medicine to hide away from the world is the lack of trust of potential users, especially in the western parts of the world. The main reason for this distrust is the lack of scientific research and evidence to back the efficacy of these remedies. Furthermore, there is not adequate importance or focus given by authorities and corporations to promote research on traditional medicines and techniques due to its commercial non-viability at the moment.

Proposed solution

One way to reinforce the trust of the people is to carry out extensive research with regard to home medicines and include them in an easily accessible platform or a database along with other anecdotal evidence, endorsements, and recommendations.

Solution: A Tool to introduce, endorse, and recommend home remedies (evidence-based medicine) and thereby attract the attention of researchers, government authorities, and corporations to this domain of research.

Channels used: Interactive Webpage and mobile app

There would be four major users interacting with the tool

Introducer

There would be three types of introducers based on their expertise level. Grade A: Certified practitioner/expert/Researcher Grade B: Explorers Grade C: Non-expert

Role and responsibility:

Creating the complete profile with qualifications and professional details Introduction of remedies and techniques with clear guidelines or demonstrations. Submission of list of ingredients, sources and origins. Communicating with interested researchers.

Profile evaluation criteria

Source Anecdotal evidence: Tested or used Origin Credibility

Motivation

Obtaining world recognition for the remedies and techniques. Individual recognition. Collation of valid endorsements for the remedy posted. Network building.

Researcher

Role and responsibility:

Creating the researcher profile. Selecting a remedy to conduct his/her research on. Adding already published research to a certain post (remedy). Connecting with the introducer if needed via personal messages.

Profile evaluation criteria:

Institute/University Published research

Motivation:

Accessibility to a database filled with best home remedies and techniques across the world Availability of research subjects with vast scope and direct reachability

Endorser

Role and responsibility:

Creating the endorser profile. Providing endorsements to the remedies posted by introducers.

Profile evaluation criteria:

Credibility based on certifications and experience in the field of medicine. Validity of the endorsements given. Eg : Number of endorsed remedies that acquired recognition through published research vs the number of total endorsements given.

Motivation:

Promotion of traditional home remedies and techniques which can be beneficial to wider communities especially at crisis situations such as COVID 19.

Public

Role and responsibility:

To view traditional remedies and techniques with accessibility to recommend, view, and share home remedies by creating a profile.

Motivation:

Accessibility to share own experiences of using home remedies and techniques with communities and to obtain verified information to take preventive and protective measures against viruses.

Process of assigning a score to each remedy

A score (Maximum possible score is 10) will be assigned to each remedy using the below criteria and the weights. (These criteria are open to discussion and can be changed based on consultation with the experts in the field)

Credibility of the introducer - 20% The credibility of the introducer will be assessed based on the grades A, B, and C. From the 20% of the score assigned to this criteria grade A introducers will be given a 75%, grade B introducers will be given 25% and grade C introducers won’t be given marks for this criteria.

Availability of written sources - 5% Depending on the evidence for written sources this 5% marks will be allocated to the remedy.

Anecdotal evidence - 10% Depending on whether there is anecdotal evidence for the remedy or not this 10% of marks will be allotted.

Availability of published research - 60% The most weightage of the score would be on the availability of published research supporting or proving the efficacy of the remedy.

Endorsements - 5% 5% of the marks will be allocated if there are 100 or more endorsements given to the remedy.

A country-wise ranking

A country-wise ranking will be presented on the tool itself and the number of remedies posted from each country and their scores would contribute to the country ranking. Through this ranking system, we expect the introducers, researchers, endorsers, and the public from a certain country to be motivated in order to bring their country’s rank up in the ranking system, thereby bringing the platform to the attention of the responsible government authorities and other corporations.

The solution’s impact on the crisis.

Since some communities around the world already have experienced the benefits of using home remedies to boost their immune systems and lower their chances of getting infected with COVID-19, the pooling of such best practices in a credible platform backed by scientific research and anecdotal evidence will give the rest of the world an opportunity to consider and make an educated decision about using these home remedies to their own benefit.

The value of our solution after the crisis.

Even after the COVID-19 crisis, this tool can be a platform to share reliable home remedies and treatments around the world, to support modern medicine to fight diseases where modern medicine has not been very effective in controlling the disease. For example; hyperglycemia. Also, the database created can serve as a tool to act immediately in order to share traditional medicinal knowledge in case of a novel virus, like COVID-19 hits the world again. Then this tool will provide a reliable source for interested people around the world to rely on to boost their immunity to the virus.

The necessities in order to continue the project.

Technical expertise needed to develop interactive web and mobile interfaces and maintain. Financial support needed to design and execute the project. WHO and authorized research institutions’ support and guidance to promote this tool among potential introducers, researchers, endorsers, and public.

Challenges we ran into.

Not finding the people with required technical knowledge on developing the interface and lack of expert knowledge on evaluating a remedy. Therefore we kept the metrics used to evaluate the medicine open for discussion.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Developing a project idea from scratch and being able to submit this idea in one and a half days itself is an accomplishment for us :)