Symptomas

Symptomas is a knowledge base and taxonomy of human symptoms designed to standardize symptom description and support diagnostic reasoning. It catalogs symptoms, signs, and patient-reported experiences, linking each entry to possible causes, diagnostic contexts, and evidence levels. The name derives from the Greek word symptoma, meaning a sign or manifestation.

Entries include definitions, synonyms, qualifiers (onset, duration, intensity, progression), typical associated findings, differential diagnoses, and etiologies. Each symptom is mapped to standardized codes from medical ontologies such as SNOMED CT and ICD-11 to facilitate interoperability. The system emphasizes both objective signs and subjective experiences and records presentations across ages and care settings.

Governance and use: Symptomas is maintained by an international consortium of clinicians, informaticians, and researchers. Updates are peer-reviewed and versioned. Data privacy and patient consent considerations are central, with de-identified case material used for research. The platform supports robust search and filtering and can be integrated with electronic health records and educational tools to provide context-sensitive prompts.

Applications and limitations: The resource is used in medical education, differential diagnosis support, and research into symptom patterns, and for patient-facing education. Limitations include dependence on input data quality, potential biases, and the risk of overreliance on listed symptoms without clinical judgment.

See also: symptom, differential diagnosis, medical ontology, SNOMED CT, ICD-11.