When it comes to actual selection of the homeopathic software, beside homeopathic repertories, materia medicae are considered one of their most important parts. The usual marketing hype aimed at impressing a potential user revolves mainly around the figures – number of books, number of pages, number of authors etc. While the numbers are something that human mind can easily grasp, the conclusions (as to which homeopathic software is „better“) based on plain numbers are often misleading.
A sheer amount of text does not guarantee the quality and actual usability. Let's illustrate the claim on a following example: a homeopathic software that includes 100 000 standard pages of materia medicae. If you imagine the amount, I believe it is safe to say that very few people, if any, will ever read through such a massive amount of text. Considering the fact that materia medicae are not exactly a light reading, we can safely assume you will be able to utilize only a very small fraction of what that particular homeopathic software offers. What about the rest? Do you really need so many books?
Obviously, if you cannot normally use such an amount of information, you should either be looking for ways that allow you to do so, or drop the idea completely and focus only on the most relevant titles.
This is the point when selecting a homeopathic software with the sensible implementation of materia medica can make all the difference.
If you decide to go for the large amounts of books, you should make sure your homeopathic software provides search functions powerful enough to be usable in a day-to-day homeopathic practice and that it compensates for some crucial drawbacks many materia medicae have.
Here are some questions to ask your homeopathic software vendor:
Is it possible to effectively search through the materia medicae?
Does your homeopathic software allow searching for the occurrence of several terms in a text, paragraph, sentence?
Is it possible to link the search results to specific remedies or do I have to find that information manually by reading the headings of the chapters?
Have your materia medicae typos corrected (a BIG problem with many materia medicae) or is this problem otherwise addressed in your homeopathic software?
Does your homeopathic software utilize synonyms and compensate for the archaic terms used in older materia medicae?
Beside the muscly search engine in your homeopathic software, you can also try to solve the problem of large amount of text by selecting works containing condensed information from various sources, such as titles by Frans Vermeulen. For instance, his Concordant materia medica, which is basically a compilation, contains all the unique information from ten older homeopathic authors, compensated for redundant information and various types of errors. This reduces the size, while maintaining the amount of useful information.
If you pay at least some attention to the mentioned points, you should be able to avoid purchasing a homeopathic software that includes many materia medicae in a form that you absolutely cannot utilize.
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