HISTORY OF KHA

The History and Philosophy of Kent Homeopathic Associates
MacRepertory and ReferenceWorks were created out of vision and passion.

In 1986, a friend loaned David an Apple Macintosh to help him write teaching notes for his classes at Hahnemann College. She thought it would be an improvement over the very old non-correcting Royal typewriter that he was using at the time.

David accepted it unenthusiastically. He brought away from his experience as a electrical engineering and computer science major at University of California at Berkeley a feeling that computers brought a kind of cold, dead quality to everything they touched. But the friend was persistent.

When David tried the Mac he was stunned. There were little pictures and something called a mouse - radically different from the text-only computers he knew. It was actually fun.

Within days he was hooked and went out and bought his own Mac. He wanted to use the computer for homeopathy---homeopathy has the data, computers excel at illuminating data. But, after finding only PC-compatible, text-based homeopathic software without even a repertory for selecting rubrics, David realized that he would have to create his own program. He had a vision of a program that had the repertory on the screen and you could just click to select rubrics, one with graphs showing the results.

He couldn't let go of the vision but he realized that it was beyond his programming capabilities. He put his vision on hold until one day when he met a programmer and something clicked. Clearly brilliant and enthusiastic, it turned out that Mike Hourigan had worked on projects that were very similar to David's repertory idea. And, amazingly, Mike had worked on the Mac.

Through a generous loan from The Hahnemann Clinic, the first program was started. It took a year before a functioning version was created. There were pictures for the sections of the repertory, graphs, and the remedies could instantly be hidden or shown.

David was stunned by the homeopathic community’s interest in the program. He hired someone to help ship the programs and another person to handle the money. The next year David created Homeonet, the world's first Internet network for homeopaths. A year after that, realizing that analyses would be even more powerful if the materia medica could be used directly, David created ReferenceWorks.

The growth, success and demands for MacRepertory and ReferenceWorks expanded rapidly. And things haven't slowed down yet! At its roots, MacRepertory was created out of a vision; the business came second. And always the vision, innovation and drive to advance homeopathy have been the heart of what we do.

In many ways the programs have advanced homeopathy, either directly or by supporting the visionary homeopaths to leap into new territory. KHA's pledge to you is that we will continue to do all that we can to support and advance homeopathy and to help you improve your prescribing and grow your practice.