Homeopathy in Healthcare - Updated Swiss Government HTA Report Published

A full Health Technology Assessment (HTA) report on the effectiveness, appropriateness, safety and costs of homeopathy in health care has been published in an updated English translation.  The report was commissioned by the Swiss Health authorities to inform decision-making on the further inclusion of homeopathy in the list of services covered by the statutory health insurance. The report offers a differentiated evaluation of the practice of homeopathy in health care and confirms it as a valuable addition to the conventional medical landscape - a status it has held for a long time in practical healthcare in Europe and around the World.

An HTA is an established scientific procedure which, in contrast to the meta-analyses and systematic reviews specified by the Cochrane Collaboration Standards, examines not only the efficacy of a particular intervention, but especially also its 'real-world' effectiveness, its appropriateness, safety and economy. HTAs are therefore much wider in scope and politically more informative. They include material that is 'normally' not taken into consideration, such as observational studies, good case series and longitudinal cohort studies.

This revised version of the  report first published in German in 2004 especially re-evaluates the separate deeply faulted quantitative analysis of Shang et al published in 2005 in The Lancet  accompanied by the unfortunately titled editorial 'The end of homeopathy' . Taking into consideration criteria of external and model validity as well as internal validity the re-evaluation produces a truly remarkable result in favour of homeopathy.

In summary, the report concludes there is sufficient evidence for the preclinical effectiveness and the clinical efficacy of homeopathy and for its safety and economy compared with conventional treatment. It is a highly popular intervention. Future research methods must respect the unique qualities of homeopathy by attaching more weight to single case evaluations, by including practically and expertly applied homeopathic treatment into research and clinical practice in order to identify its real potential and limitations.

Copies of the report can be purchased from the following web-site here where sections of it can also be read online.

Our thanks to the European Central Council of Homeopaths for the text of this report and the image: visit the ECCH website here.