Synthea

Synthea is an open-source synthetic patient generator and simulator of healthcare data. It creates lifelike, fully synthetic patient records that resemble real-world medical histories but do not correspond to real individuals. The generated data are used to test health IT systems, validate data analytics pipelines, support research, and practice data handling without exposing protected health information.

The tool models populations by simulating births, demographic attributes, social determinants, and a lifetime sequence of health events. Disease modules define typical trajectories, risk factors, treatments, and healthcare encounters, allowing the engine to produce comprehensive longitudinal records. Output is provided in standard healthcare data formats, most notably FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources), including Patient, Encounter, Condition, Procedure, Medication, and Observation resources, as well as CSV exports for analysis. This makes the synthetic data usable for interoperability testing, software development, and method validation while preserving patient privacy.

Synthea is implemented in Java as a modular engine that can be configured and extended with new populations and disease modules. It is actively maintained by an open-source community and released under an open-source license. The project emphasizes realism and reproducibility, enabling users to generate diverse synthetic datasets that reflect different regions, healthcare settings, and disease burdens.