Abstract

Nigerian medicinal plants have over the time been identified to be a good alternative to orthodox medicines in managing health-related problems especially among those living below the poverty line. The limited ethno botanical knowledge of indigenous medicinal plants of our richly endowed green vegetation, has created a challenging gap that needs to be filled. In this study, we identified in their indigenous names, a total of one hundred and fourteen (114) medicinal plants of fifty eight (58) different botanical family species. The study area covers the three senatorial zones of Kogi State, Nigeria. In order to present the knowledge of identifying sets of plants that can cure a particular disease/ailment, thereby improving on the efficacy of herbs; this research adapted the use of Apriori algorithm to identify the hidden patterns among the different medicinal plants in the compiled repository. The compiled repository is an indigenous database that is peculiar to the three major languages that exists in Kogi State of Nigeria. The developed model was used to implement the classification of diseases and links them with corresponding medicinal plant(s) that can cure them. The model was further deployed into a web based application (KAMPHIS-Kogi African Medicinal Plants Healthcare Information System) built using these tools; Python programming language (Laravel) for the frontend design and MySQL for the backend. The web application is expected to assist individuals in natural self-healthcare, supplements for medical practitioners and industrial use, such as pharmaceutical companies for the production of drugs and herbs that will have higher level efficacy