1. A method for identifying at least one herbal ingredient effective in treating at least one illness classified under TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) using a computer, comprising: (a) obtaining TCM data sets comprising: TCM illnesses, TCM herbal ingredients for treatment, and/or symptoms associated with the TCM illnesses; (b) using at least one artificial neural network, computing a relevance index based on the degree of relevance between TCM data sets; and (c) identifying at least one herbal ingredient effective in treating at least one TCM illness based on the computed relevance index, wherein the computer comprises at least one database or access to at least one database that stores the TCM data sets, at least one program module involved with the analysis of the data in the database, and at least one artificial neural network.