Improving homeopathic prescribing

Every medical practitioner has to consider his, or her, treatment choices and the rationale behind every therapeutic decision. In homeopathic practice, the question of remedy choice is particularly acute. In his paper on Polarity Analysis in this issue of Homeopathy, Heiner Frei demonstrates that improved outcomes are possible through refinements in the analysis methodology for homeopathic remedy selection.[ ¹ ]

Homeopathic clinicians invest a lot of time in the process of collecting clinical data from their patients. This is primarily because the clinical process is quasi-individualised and also because the contexts in which the illness and its symptoms have emerged may have a direct bearing on the choice of treatment. Successful outcomes are achieved when we successfully mirror complexity with complexity and identified treatment inputs that are context-sensitive.

To achieve these results with consistency, however, we need to be able to access a portfolio of meaningful data and, within this, we need to be able to identify reliable subsets that have direct applicability to each new clinical presentation. This process of profile-matching also requires tools which help us to construct an argument for each specific treatment. Ideally these resources should engender a method of analysis which is rational and which advances the reliability of the data itself, over time.

• References

• 1 Frei H. Polarity analysis, a new approach to increase the precision of homeopathic prescriptions. Homeopathy 2009; 98: 49-55.
• 2 Rutten A.L.B., Stolper C.F., Lugten R.F.G., Barthels R.W.J.M. Statistical analysis of six repertory rubrics after prospective assessment applying Bayes' theorem. Homeopathy 2009; 98: 26-34.
• 3 Kharal A. Homeopathic drug selection using intuitionistic fuzzy sets. Homeopathy 2009; 98: 35-39.
• 4 Gadd B. In search of the reliable repertory. Homeopathy 2009; 98: 60-64.