Dr Bob Allkin

My early career focused on developing software, identification tools, and data standards for biologists collating and analysing biodiversity data.

More recently I focused on how this invaluable information may be deployed to achieve social, as well as academic, benefits. I worked in Mexico and Brazil building information “products” of wider use e.g. “Plantas do Nordeste” created a network of 35 Brazilian research institutions and 45 development NGOs to define and deliver the priority information needs of rural communities in support of “sustainable” livelihoods.

I managed delivery of “The Plant List” a Kew Missouri joint-venture that combined datasets from multiple sources to create a first comprehensive list of plants. This demonstrated the immense appetite, among non-botanists, for plant name services. Medicinal Plant Names Services (launched in 2014) deploys Kew’s unique & comprehensive nomenclatural and taxonomic datasets in accessible, relevant formats for health professionals.

MPNS is the most comprehensive catalogue of medicinal plants (c.34,000) and ensures our users’ scientific rigour by mapping > 0.6 million often ambiguous terms for plants and herbal substances used inconsistently between countries and disciplines.

MPNS offers a data portal, supplies data to regulators and industry enabling comprehensive retrieval of published research and enhancing the reliability of regulatory and quality controls of herbal substances.

It works with a network of major health partners, Plants for Health will now expand the scope of MPNS to cover all health products (dietary supplements, beverages, cosmetics, and allergens & poisons) to address a considerably wider set of audiences.

• BSc (Hons) Biology, Queen Mary College, London University, 1976
• PhD Computer-assisted plant identification, Westminster Univ. & Natural History Museum, London, 1979

• Plants for Health
• Medicinal Plant Names Services
• Plants and minerals in Byzantine popular pharmacy
• Reconciling Medical Knowledge Communities: Learning from the History of Indian Plant Drugs
• Useful Plants and Fungi of Colombia

• "Medicines Safety on Air": Navigating the Plant-Names Jungle. Drug Safety Matters, WHO 2020. Uppsala Monitoring Centre.
• “What’s in a Name?” How Kew helps drug regulators disambiguate the messy welter of medicinal plant names to shore-up regulation and save lives. Access Solutions: 2021
• Kew’s Plant Names Services adopted by global health: Find out how Kew’s Medicinal Plant Names Services (MPNS) is involved in helping the world’s health regulators to ensure that herbal products are traded safely by supporting the development of an important new medicinal standard.
• BBC: Project aims to end 'ambiguity' of plant-based medicine