About HMC

Public standards are critically important to help ensure the quality of all medicines, including herbal medicines. The Herbal Medicines Compendium (HMC), published by the U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention (USP), is a freely available, online resource that provides standards for herbal ingredients used in herbal medicines. Standards are expressed primarily in monographs. A monograph contains general information including the definition of the herbal ingredient relative to the monograph title and then follows with a specification. The specification contains tests for critical quality attributes of the herbal ingredient and includes analytical test procedures and acceptance criteria for specified tests.