RADAR (Robust Anonymous DAta Records
* Encadrants : Pierre Collet, Pierre Parrend, Anne Jeannin * Lieu du l'apprentissage : Laboratoire ICUBE * Contrat d'apprentissage : du 1er septembre 2016 au 31 août 2018
Gérer des données numériques au niveau d'un pays est une gageure, notamment dans les pays émergents sujets à des coupures électriques, à un réseau internet peu fiable et à faible débit. Dans ce contexte difficile, on se propose de réaliser un système de gestion de données numériques sûr et fiable, basé sur les systèmes complexes.
Une première application consistera à gérer la plus grosse cohorte médicale mondiale, réunie par la société JIVA Ayurveda :
JIVA AYURDEDA is a healthcare organization which serves 1,800 cities in India through 50 clinics, backed by one of the largest telemedicine networks in the world with 200 practitioners consulting online on www.jiva.com, free of charge. Their Faridabad manufacturing unit produces over 500 classical Ayurvedic formulations and ships them to patients according to relevant prescriptions. Doctor Partap CHAUHAN, JIVA founder and director, teaches Ayurvedic medicine all over the world, and hosts his own shows on Indian television, gathering weekly one hundred million faithful viewers… During his trips to France, Dr. Chauhan had the opportunity to discuss with Jean-Pierre Gerbaulet about the interest of giving Ayurveda more scientific grounds. Indeed, this medicine is essentially based on three to four thousand years of statistical experience of what actually works, and thus derives, like any science, from empirical observations. Whereas countless experimental data at its disposal may encourage to design a scientific model, Ayurveda prefers to use a holistic model deeply grounded in Hinduist mystic tradition. This positioning confers on it a rich global character, but it baffles Western practitioners and patients. According to Dr. Chauhan, India’s eminent role in science on the international scene, particularly in medicine, would justify that more scientific explanations of the methods used by Ayurveda be proposed to Indian middle class citizens with a Western education. This approach would also facilitate the promotion of Ayurvedic medicine outside India. In this view, Dr. Chauhan suspects that the growing success of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) in the West is imputable to the work accomplished since the sixties by Western academics and practitioners, especially on acupuncture and on hypnosis in anesthesiology, whereas Ayurveda is not engaged in a similar approach . In this context, Dr. Chauhan and Jean-Pierre Gerbaulet have agreed to cooperate in designing the program of a study leading to a “scientific model of Ayurveda”. International scientists already working with J-P Gerbaulet and N-Light on other projects will join them, including CS-DC UNESCO Unitwin, a group of 120 universities from 38 countries (Complex Systems – Digital Campus). Pr. Paul Bourgine, President of CS-DC, Partap Chauhan, President of JIVA, and J-P Gerbaulet, President of N-Light, have met in France in October 2015 and have agreed to cooperate. Pr. Pierre Collet at Strasbourg University, who already has some experience with a similar project in Senegal, will be in charge of the project for CS-DC. According to Dr. Chauhan, the AYUSH Ministry (Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy) created in India to manage and promote these traditional practices, will support this initiative. Further, the WHO in Geneva has been approached by N-Light and is very interested in the project (and in similar ones regarding Traditional Medicines). II. Tentative program for the Ayurveda project 1. JIVA Database JIVA has already started filling a database of patient trajectories. Close to a million of patients files have been stored to date in the database which keeps growing at a daily rate of about 2000 patients. 2. A scientific approach of Ayurveda A scientific comparison of the clinical results obtained by JIVA using traditional Ayurveda with those obtained in similar cases by Western medicine will then be implemented. Comparison will address: a. Diagnostic methods b. Therapeutic methods c. Pharmacopeia d. Preventive methods (holistic vs. reductionist, psychosomatic aspects, lifestyle).
Whereas data acquisition from patients files is apparently easy (to be confirmed), traditional Ayurvedic rules will have to be encoded to make it accessible to computerized treatment. This may also apply to Western medicine which describes separately pathologies and their treatments, but which as no global model. The resulting synthesis should result in a provisional scientific model of Ayurveda. The software used by JIVA to create the database and the one allowing CS-DC to create a model have to match. Besides, depending on the findings, adjustments may have to be done to: - Make the model of Ayurveda accessible to Western practitioners, by pointing out and describing aspects new to them and to Western science; - Make it easy to identify common points and differences, possibly suggesting leads to bridge gaps between them. 3. Influence of Ayurveda on Western medicine An interesting aspect of this project could be to point out weak points of the Western approach of medicine: - Absence of the “vital energy” concept, present in all Traditional Medicines and absent from the West, yet to be scientifically approached and analyzed; - Weakness of the influence of “consciousness” in psychosomatic phenomena; - Lack of holism in the patient’s diagnosis; - Relatively poor influence of preventative actions, including lifestyle, in the West. 4. Extension to other types of medicine WHO being quite interested in this approach, it may be useful, in a future stage, to extend the process to other Traditional Medicines and unconventional medicines (supervised by the same WHO department managed by Dr. Qi Zhang): - Traditional Chinese Medicine(s) (TCM); - Shamanic medical results; - Homeopathic medicine; - Western energetic and electromagnetic medicine(s). III. Analysis Comparing several models may lead to the construction of a metamodel to which the various types of medicine will participate. Their positioning in the metamodel should clearly display their respective domains of application, specific validity, strengths and weaknesses. And it should identify in each one of them characters little or not understood in others, which will have to be studied. In the scope of our specific Ayurveda study, such an extended comparison would help positioning Indian traditional medicine not only with respect to allopathic medicine, but also to others. Its holistic character may then give Ayurveda a role as a potential bridge between most of them.
IV. Improvement of the models and the metamodel One option is to publish the initial model(s) as a first step toward Indian people with Western education, and possibly to Western practitioners and patients. Another option would be to decide that experiments identified to improve the model(s) have to be designed and implemented prior to any publication. V. Experiments in view of completing the metamodel Without prejudice to the results of the first study, we can foresee that such experiments will concern unknown energies and fields, such as vital energy and fields of consciousness, the existence of which is well identified but has never been properly explained and modelled. This is why our team of scientists also includes physicists, mathematicians and psychiatrists.
VI. Time planning and Financial projections The team being about to be completed, a planning of the various phases has to be established, together with the roles of the participants at each stage of the project. Then financial projections will be made for each phase. VII. Financing JIVA is already financing the database, and will continue to finance it. The University of Strasbourg will cover the main expenses of Pr. Collet’s team. Complementary expenses will be covered by N-Light. If the first results are useful, it is probable that public and private sponsors will be found in France and in India, and possibly through WHO and UNESCO. Jean-Pierre Gerbaulet N-LIGHT Institute