Project – Aleph Repertory

THE DREAM BEHIND THE PROJECT

The dream and challenge underpinning the project is to create a virtual space aimed at favoring interaction, a place where homeopathic therapists with different training backgrounds can all contribute by suggesting additions or changes to the Repertory, and by expanding the knowledge and the understanding of Remedies.

The final goal of the ALEPH project is to develop a new homeopathic semantics.
For years we have heard about Concepts and about Families of homeopathic remedies. Despite this, and beyond any personal impression, there seems to be no ongoing debate among professionals on the names to be used to describe such concepts or their meaning.

The need to update the rubrics of the Repertory - thus maintaining the centuries-old experience - will always fail to become a reality, until research and study are carried out thanks to the activity and efforts of an individual. Instead, it should rely on collaboration, on information sharing and on the commitment of the entire Homeopathic Community.

Networking is essential to support the growth and development of modern Homeopathic Medicine and to contribute in laying the foundations of a fruitful future debate.

To achieve such goals we need two tools: a virtual space of sharing and interaction, and a repertory, which should be editable and adaptable to the arising needs of both individuals and of Modern Homeopathy in general, thus taking into account the centuries old experience.

The project aims at providing subscribers with few and basic tools and materials at low cost; firstly, in order to favor the growth of an open-source community where all its members can debate; and secondly, in order to provide members with the opportunity to financially support the development and the modernization of the community itself.

THE HEART OF THE PROJECT

The project originates from the passion of a group of colleagues and from the years of enthusiastic work of Dr. Davide Casalini. These joint efforts led to the creation of ALEPH: an online search-based application and a database. The database is made up of information focusing on the substances and it has been designed to be easily updated and adapted to the individual needs arising from the clinical experience of every therapist.

We have often wished we had the possibility to add, remove, or move symptoms and remedies within our repertory, in order to treasure our knowledge and to facilitate future homeopathic diagnosis and prescriptions. When we started creating and updating the repertory, whose structure remains faithful to our Masters’ experience, we immediately realized we needed to exchange our views with other colleagues.

As a matter of fact, if we could have our clinical observations confirmed by one or more fellow homeopaths, we would surely obtain more meaningful data. By doing so, we would get back to Hahnemann’s original idea of a growing community whose development is not tied to the views of individual homeopaths.

This is what inspired the dream to see that through the contribution of all the members of this new Community, Homeopathic Medicine could evolve into an anthropological approach for the analysis and treatment of the individual complexity.

We firmly believe that high-quality information, flexible searching tools and the possibility to exchange views with other fellow professionals, are all essential ingredients for the modern Homeopathic Doctors who want to treasure their experience and expertise, contribute to future developments, and have the opportunity to adapt and improve the working tool they use the most: the repertory.

Guidelines and rigid solutions cannot be considered as part of an effective Homeopathic Methodology which, since Hahnemann’s times, is instead to be conceived as a phenomenological and complex discipline that is continuously evolving and enriching itself.

PROJECT CONCEPTION

The dream behind the creation of a Homeopathic Community capable of fostering dialogue and of supporting the development of Medicine - thus turning Hahnemann’s thoughts into reality - made us realize that we needed to envisage two parallel lines of action.

The first one aims at providing practitioners with a simple and flexible tool: an editable repertory designed to meet the day-to-day requirements of therapists.

The second one aims at providing practitioners with economically affordable tools: this is the reason behind the adoption of a Web-based platform whose features are made available through a convenient annual subscription.

The therapists who decide to make professional use of ALEPH and have signed up for the annual subscription, will consequently be able to edit ALEPH according to their requirements.

They will also have the possibility to change the structure of the repertory and to change the rubrics and the search criteria. Future implementations of ALEPH will provide subscribers with the possibility to use the Forum section to import the suggestions provided by other colleagues.

We draw our inspiration from the founder of Homeopathic Medicine, we therefore believe the Community to be capable of financing itself and of subsidizing its development, by favoring not only open source dialogue on medical matters, but also open source sharing of findings from the cultural scene or developments of diagnostic and therapeutic tools.

For this reason, the revenues obtained through platform subscriptions will be reinvested to develop a Forum section and new features of the application by taking into account the information provided by the Community. Proceeds may be even used to organize Conferences to favor face-to-face discussions.

We will share updates on the way proceeds are reinvested through our Blog posts.

THE FUTURE

The continuous growth of the Community, together with the subscribers’ contribution in terms of both input of materials and of economic support, will allow us to set further ambitious goals for the project.
During the two-year start-up phase the ALEPH contents will be constantly updated and a Forum section will be implemented.

Furthermore, the design of the mobile App for both the web-based ALEPH application and for the Community portal will favor local use of these tools and make them available for tablets.
Part of the revenues obtained through subscriptions is intended to cover costs of copyright for the colleagues interested in sharing their scientific, homeopathic and clinical publications.

The higher investment will be directed to the development of the ALEPH web-search engine, and it will be used for the realization of an increasingly sophisticated semantic search engine adopting the principles of neural networks.

SPECIAL THANKS

Thank you to old and present masters, to the masters I’ve studied and to those I have had the pleasure to learn from and to work with, because they all contributed in leading me towards a new way to conceive myself and the mankind with his inner words.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart to all friends, colleagues and programmers with whom I have shared joys, thoughts and work during these years.

And finally, my warmest embrace to my sons Marta, Rebecca and Gregorio, who constantly remind me that life is the most magnificent and mysterious experience, an experience we can basically feel and live but only occasionally express.

Davide Casalini