Synergy Homeopathic has released an upgraded version of their earlier “Synergy SHS” software in the name of “Synergy Viva”. The main improvement in this release is the ability to add-on optional modules. 

I upgraded to the new release about a week ago and opted for the “Genie” add-on. What is special about “Genie”? According to the company, this is the “first-ever homeopathically trained AI assistant”. Given that all major disciplines are evolving to adopt GenAI, it is good that Synergy Homeopathic decided to take advantage of the recent advances. (By the way, I had developed iHomeoMate, an intelligent homeopathy assistant, using GenAI techniques several months ago).

In this article, I will focus on a couple of features of Genie that I find interesting. 

When you click on the Genie icon in SHS Viva, you get this screen:

This is the top-level grouping of the various interaction modes with the underlying Large Language Model (LLM). To begin, let me select “Repertories” group. This leads to the following screen:

Except the first one titled “Help me find rubrics”, the rest are part of the standard “Viva” program. So let us click on the first item. This creates a new prompt in the chat input field:

Let me type a simple case description and ask the system to identify the rubrics:

Quite nice! The system has identified the main rubrics. Even better, alongside each rubric is a link that will take you to the corresponding rubric in “Reliable Repertory”. I really like this!

Incidentally, I notice that the symptom related to winter aggravation does not have a matching rubric. So I prompt the system again:

Now the system suggests 7 rubrics. The first 4 seem relevant, but I don’t understand why the last 3 were included. 

You can see that the system asks at the end if we want to see the top remedies for this case. I chose not to continue.

Next, I wanted to find out how good the system is in identifying rubrics from text. 

This is disappointing! I haven’t even completed the case. I accidentally pressed Enter after typing the first sentence, which is a background description of the patient. The system blindly lists “rubrics” based on the given text. This is what happens when one uses “semantic search” without proper weighting and filtering! The system should ideally have said “There is no rubric in this text” or something similar. I hope the developers fix such issues in the next release.

Moving on, let us explore “Remedies”. When you click on the “Remedies”  in the main screen, the following appears:

Let us select the second item “Differentiate/Compare”, and then click “Differentiate” in the next screen.

I ask the system to differentiate between “Berberis” and “Cantharis”.

Good! The result is as expected. The system compares the two remedies and provides their keynotes. This will be useful if we quickly want to differentiate between remedies as part of selecting the best remedy for the given case.

Next, let us explore “Clinical Aspects”. Clicking this leads to this screen:

Now, click “Clinical conditions”. The following appears:

I enter the same case I entered earlier in the context of Repertories. The system responds as follows:

The system identifies Tub, Hep, Kali-bi, Dros, and Kali-c as possible remedies for this condition. I then ask the system to suggest the remedy to start with.

It recommends starting with Hepar Sulph 30c. Looks OK to me, but I am not competent to comment on the remedy choice. But what puts me off is the last sentence: 

“Always consult with a qualified homeopath or healthcare professional before starting any new treatment regimen, especially for chronic conditions.”

This is a standard warning/disclaimer generated by the LLM. While it is acceptable when interacting with a non-professional, I am surprised that it is present here as well. This software is typically used by a qualified, practising homeopath, so this suggestion is not appropriate here. This shows that the developers have to fine tune their prompt.

I have covered three of the essential elements/features of Genie. There are many more interesting features and I will write about them in a future article.

By the way, I was curious to find out which LLM is being used in Genie. So I asked it a few probing questions and based on the responses it gave, the model appears to be GPT-3.5-turbo.  I cannot officially confirm this and it doesn’t really matter. 

Based on the information shared by Synergy, it is to be noted that the initial payment towards Genie add-on includes approximately 150 complimentary questions. Once the token limit is reached, we have to pay $5 additionally for another 150 questions. I expect this to change in future depending on the underlying model pricing.

I have a suggestion to the SHS team: As part of case analysis, it would be nice if the system identifies correct rubrics from the text and optionally, automatically copies them to the symptom clipboard, displaying in the repertory table. That will make the manual repertorization much easier and quicker. In other words, better integration with the existing repertorial analysis would really make the software “intelligent”. More over, it should be possible to include images and relevant lab reports (if any) as part of case, so that the system can analyze the case in greater detail just as a homeopath does (see this, for example). Finally, wouldn’t it be nice if the system can use “Sankaran’s Sensation Method” as part of its analysis and suggest the curative remedy? The Synergy Homeopathic team has the right resources to build a such a truly “intelligent” system. I fervently hope the team takes this suggestion seriously.

One thing that put me off when upgrading to the current version is that the upgradation/installation has to be done only by SHS support team! I use lots of software and almost in every case, I download the software and install it by myself. Installation is usually straightforward. Even if you take the earlier incarnations MacRepertory and ReferenceWorks, the installation was quite simple, rarely requiring the tech support team to get involved. But in the case of SHS, it has to be done only by their support team. This is an enormous waste of time and resource, especially for Synergy. In my case, I had to wait for a couple of days (after making payment) for installation, and the actual process took around 30 minutes, mainly because the support person was handling multiple clients simultaneously! 

Overall, Synergy Viva, in particular the Genie add-on, is a great addition to the family of homeopathy software. It has the potential to revolutionalize homeopathy, helping homeopaths to solve complex cases with greater accuracy, benefiting the common man in the end. Congratulations to Synergy Homeopathic!

Have a great week ahead!

Tags: iHomeoMate, Intelligent Assistant, Synergy Genie