RootWise

Evidence before advice.

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Inspiration

What it does

The Problem

Herbal remedies are widely discussed through social media, family recommendations, traditional knowledge, and online health content. The problem is not simply finding information. It is knowing what information can actually be trusted.

A traditional use, a personal testimonial, and scientific evidence are not the same thing. Yet they are often presented together, making it difficult for people to understand what is supported, what is uncertain, and what may carry risks.

We built RootWise to make that distinction easier to understand.

Our Solution

RootWise is an evidence and safety explorer for herbal remedies.

Instead of presenting herbs as cures or relying on a generic AI chatbot, RootWise organizes information into clear categories:

  • Traditional/common uses
  • Available evidence
  • What the evidence does and does not establish
  • Uncertainty
  • Safety considerations
  • Potential interaction warnings where supported
  • When professional medical care may be appropriate
  • Sources for further reading

The goal is not to tell someone what treatment to take.

The goal is to help them understand the quality and limitations of the information they are encountering.

How It Works

A user searches for a remedy using its common or scientific name.

RootWise then displays a structured evidence map for that remedy, allowing the user to move from the traditional claim to the available evidence and then to relevant safety information.

Sources are provided so users can examine the underlying information themselves.

The current prototype intentionally uses a small curated remedy library rather than making unsupported claims about hundreds of herbs.

Why RootWise Exists

People do not necessarily need more health information. They need better ways to understand the information they already encounter.

RootWise exists to help answer a simple question:

"What do we actually know about this remedy, and what remains uncertain?"

Responsible Use

RootWise is an educational information tool. It does not diagnose medical conditions, prescribe treatments, provide individualized medical advice, or replace healthcare professionals.

The project deliberately avoids presenting "natural" as synonymous with "safe" and distinguishes traditional use from scientific evidence.

Where evidence is limited or uncertain, that uncertainty is communicated rather than hidden.

Technologies

  • HTML5
  • CSS3
  • Vanilla JavaScript
  • Responsive CSS Grid
  • Local structured remedy data

Sources

The remedy information is based on reputable public health information, including resources from the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH).

Sources are linked within the application where applicable.

AI Use

AI-assisted development was used during the creation and restructuring of the application.

AI was used as a development assistant rather than as the authoritative source of medical information. The application's remedy information is based on curated source material and is presented with explicit limitations.

What We Built During the Hackathon

The project began as an existing RootWise prototype.

During the hackathon, the project was transformed from a primarily static brochure into a functional evidence-and-safety explorer.

The hackathon work included:

  • Reworking the main user experience
  • Creating a searchable remedy library
  • Creating structured evidence and safety views
  • Adding uncertainty communication
  • Adding source references
  • Removing placeholder/fake analyzer behavior
  • Improving responsive styling
  • Adding safety and limitation messaging
  • Creating documentation for sources and responsible AI use

Known Limitations

The current prototype contains a deliberately small remedy library.

It does not cover every herbal remedy, medical condition, interaction, population, or possible safety issue.

Information should be verified against current professional and medical sources, and users should seek qualified healthcare advice for personal medical decisions.

Future Improvements

Future versions could expand the verified remedy library, improve natural-language claim searching, add stronger source comparison, and introduce more sophisticated evidence-ranking and accessibility features. What makes RootWise different? RootWise does not treat AI as the authority. Its core interaction is an evidence map that separates traditional use, scientific evidence, uncertainty, and safety information. This makes the product less about generating another health answer and more about helping users understand how trustworthy that answer actually is.

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