Dr. Somit Kumar, AVPRF, ET HealthWorld

ETHealthworld Editor Shahid Akhter spoke to Dr. Somit Kumar, Chief Scientific Officer and Director, AVP Research Foundation, Coimbatore, to shed light on the challenges and way forward for Ayurveda in the current scenario.

Ayurveda: Today’s Challenges
Ayurveda is one of the oldest medical systems and is based on a unique epistemology of understanding the human body, its main pillars of health, and how to maintain its health. However, we face a major challenge: how to revalidate Ayurveda as a science in modern biomedical terms. And one of the biggest challenges we face as an Ayurvedic community is how to create relevant, evidence-based practices. And its practice is the basis for the spread and globalization of Ayurveda. Unfortunately, most of the popularization of Ayurveda is through products. Because we know Ayurveda more as consumers than as people who experience its holistic approach of soul, mind, and body. Therefore, it is very important and appropriate that Ayurveda is also popularized as a systemic medicine. There are many challenges in terms of how to teach Ayurveda in terms of educational reform, how to convey the Ayurvedic system and Ayurvedic philosophy, and how to develop an ecosystem of skills that will bring about the challenges faced by society. Reform is needed. The international community faces within the realm of pluralistic and interdisciplinary health systems.

AVP Research Foundation
We all know that the next generation of healthcare will be personalized, predictive, and multidisciplinary. And how do we incorporate Ayurveda into basically this multidisciplinary care? That’s our biggest challenge. However, at that time there was a lot of criticism as to whether Ayurveda was black magic or not. Under the leadership of PR Krishnakumarji, in order to address this whole issue of validating Ayurveda on the basis of scientific paradigms, appropriate controlled clinical trials were undertaken with WHO at the time to re-validate Ayurveda as a system of medicine. A huge effort was made to implement it. This is how the WHO joint research became a reality. His pursuit didn’t end there. He wanted to spread Ayurveda to the world. He then approached the National Institutes of Health in 2004 and won the first project evaluation grant in rheumatology, conducting the first double-blind randomized clinical trial in rheumatoid arthritis. And it was one of his strongest foundations for the work of his AVP Research Foundation in 2004. And ever since then, we have been on this journey of building the evidence base for the traditional science of Ayurveda. Avp Research Foundation is committed to the fundamental principles of rediscovering Ayurveda and increasing Ayurveda’s relevance through three fundamental initiatives: It is to prove Ayurveda through basic translational research and clinical research in the areas of rheumatism, diabetes, metabolic diseases, and rare diseases such as Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

We also take the lead in publishing high-quality medical research through our peer-reviewed journal, Ancient Science of Life. We are also contributing to people’s lives through the development of new age formulations and standardized products in Ayurveda through strong standardization of raw materials and final products. We also conduct medical camps and educational programs to acquaint the general public with Ayurveda and its richness.

AVPRF: Digital technology integration
AVP Research Foundation is one of the pioneers in integrating digital technology and AI into Ayurvedic practice, developing a unique program called RUDRA back in 2005. RUDRA (Random Uninterrupted Documentation for Retrospective Analysis). As part of our digitalization, we document each patient individually, integrate high-precision AI-based diagnostics, and create personalized protocols based on these algorithms.