Machine-readable case definitions for public health surveillance.
Visit: https://opensyndrome.org/
Case definitions are the backbone of disease surveillance; they determine what counts as a case of flu, dengue, or any other public health threat. Today, most live as PDFs or plain text, meaning every system that needs them must re-interpret them from scratch. The Open Syndrome Definition (OSD) is an open JSON format that makes these definitions machine-readable, version-controlled, and interoperable.
Our paper was published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research:
Ferreira et al. The Open Syndrome Definition as a Machine-Readable Standard for Public Health. J Med Internet Res 2026;28:e86249. https://doi.org/10.2196/86249
Format & data
schema-- JSON schema and JSON-LD contextdefinitions-- the case definitions dataset
Tooling
open-syndrome-python-- Python library to parse, validate, and work with OSD definitionsopen-syndrome-r-- R package with the same capabilitieseditor-- Friendly UI interface to convert from text to JSON and vice-versa
Platform
website-- source for opensyndrome.org, including the data browser and contribution workflow
- Website & data browser: opensyndrome.org
- Dataset on Hugging Face: opensyndrome/case-definitions
- Schema docs: opensyndrome.org/how/documentation
Submit a new definition via the web form or open a pull request in definitions. All submissions go through automated schema validation and community review.
Questions? opensyndrome@anapaulagomes.me
