A Supplement for Learning Herbal Medicine Using a Web-Based Tool and Social Network

摘要

With the fast growing of using herbal medicine, pharmacists now need a basic knowledge of these topics for their professional practices. To serve the need, a set of courses on herbal medicine, is arranged for pharmacy students. Due to a limitation of time, it is hard for a student to familiar with medicinal herbs. In this paper, we introduce KUIHerbRx, a Web-based supplement learning tool on herbal medicine. The KUIHerbRx is a modified version of the Knowledge Unifying Initiator for Herbal Information (KUIHerb), which is used as a platform for building a Web community for collecting the intercultural herbal knowledge with the concept of a collective intelligence. Due to the diversities of herbs, geographic distribution and their applications, social network collaboration is important for enhanced learning. Three types of information creation, i.e., initial, voting and non-voting information, is designed. KUIHerbRx provides a supplement learning to improve knowledge and skill in herbal medicine with a scientific method. Information of medicinal herbs in several regions can be distributed and exchanged among groups of students.