The absence of standardisation has been the biggest bottleneck to global—an even national level—acceptance of Ayurveda and other AYUSH branches of medical care.

With the Ministry of AYUSH and the Ministry of Health making a big push for standardisation and validation of AYUSH drugs and preparations, avenues have been thrown open for wider acceptance of AYUSH as the mainstream treatment method.

The Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), the national standard body of India, has now joined the effort, creating a new department focused exclusively on AYUSH and notifying 31 Indian standards, 30 of them for herbs and one for a product.

The product that has been standardised is the stainless-steel Neti Pot, a simple teapot-looking device, used to decongest the nostrils as part of Ayurvedic treatment. 

The standardisation is these herbs and the Neti Pot is expected to help in ensuring international quality of products and services, provide confidence to the manufacturers and bring benefits to consumers in terms of safety, lower costs and enhanced performance.

BIS has also taken the initiative to formulate international standards in collaboration with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). On the advice of BIS, a Working Group (WG–10) on ‘Traditional Medicine’ has been created in the ISO/TC-215 ‘Health Informatics’.