Cutting Edge Research – What are the Priorities for Clinical Research and Evaluation for Homeopathy to Become a Valued Part of the Integrative Medicine Model?

Integrative Medicine is a model of healthcare which combines conventional, lifestyle and holistic approaches, informed by high-quality evidence, to improve health and wellbeing. Homeopathic researchers can struggle to get ethical approval to deliver trials of homeopathic interventions and create the kind of evidence that will allow it to become part of this growing movement for change in health care across the globe.

Dr Thompson will review the politics of homeopathic research and share her experience of designing, running and publishing a range of clinical evaluation and research studies. Within the healing model that underpins homeopathic theory and practice, the challenge remains to identify underlying mechanisms for the action homeopathic dilutions and their specific effects which we aim to identify within a placebo-controlled trial. Dr Thompson will discuss how an understanding of complexity, models of healing and local or entanglement effects, is key to designing research in complex interventions and to test the hypothesis that homeopathy can stimulate self-regulating responses to build resilience.

This presentation will contribute to an overarching question about the direction of travel needed to activate high-quality global homeopathy research programmes.

Keywords: Integrative medicine, homeopathy, trial design