Lots of alternatives: the pharmacy at the Royal London Homoeopathic Hospital. Photograph: Martin Godwin.
The Royal London Homoeopathic Hospital (RLHH) is the largest and most integrated public-sector provider of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) in Europe. We offer real patient choice: safe, effective, drug-free and self-empowering treatments for many common medical problems provided by well-qualified doctors and nurses. Despite its name, the Royal London Homoeopathic Hospital offers a range of complementary therapies, not just homeopathy.
As part of University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, one of the UK's leading academic medical centres, we are fully part of the NHS. We are developing services, including integrated antenatal and pain services with other departments at University College Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (which runs the RLHH) to provide the best of complementary and conventional medicine. Our academic department offers the UK's only course in Integrated Medicine for GPs.
The hospital has been responsible for a number of "left field" NHS innovations. For example, we established the first NHS acupuncture service in 1972. Evidence has steadily built up to prove that it is an effective treatment for various painful conditions. As well as establishing the first NHS acupuncture clinic, we trained practitioners, conducted some of the most significant research, and are currently developing cost-effective ways of integrating acupuncture into the NHS.
The RLHH also introduced complementary cancer care into the NHS, now provided by many oncology centres, and established the first NHS musculoskeletal medicine service. These services offer patients the choice of non drug-based therapies. There is great further potential in this area.
Recent research carried out at the hospital includes a clinical trial of acupuncture, showing it to be effective, and cost-effective, for chronic headache, and a trial of Ginkgo in dementia. Recent publications include Cochrane and other systematic reviews, clinical trials of homeopathy in depression and eczema, and innovative epidemiological work, looking at "effectiveness gaps" in primary care. We also host the Complementary and Alternative Medicine Specialist Library, the official knowledge NHS website for CAM (www.library.nhs.uk/cam).
We are focused on benefit to patients, which is why we emphasise patient choice and integration. But we do not shy away from the scientific debate around homeopathy.
Homeopathy is enigmatic: remarkably popular, widespread and persistent, despite the scepticism of retired professors of biomedical background. It is simply not true to say that it is unsupported by evidence. A review of 119 randomised, peer-reviewed clinical trials of homeopathy at the end of 2005 showed 49% positive results for homeopathy. Only 3% were negative. Economic studies consistently show that integrating homeopathy in medical practice results in better outcomes for the same cost.
NHS spending on homeopathy is absolutely tiny: last year, the NHS spent over 25 times more on management consultants than it did on the four NHS homeopathic hospitals.
So why so much zeal to seek to deprive sick people of choice of treatment on the NHS, when this is central to government health policy?
