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README.md

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+license: cc-by-4.0
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+Synthetic FHIR Interoperability Dataset — 20,000 Patients
+This dataset contains 20,000 fully synthetic patient records generated with Synthea™, an open-source patient simulator developed by MITRE Corporation. All records are 100% fictional — no real patient data, no HIPAA restrictions, free to use for research, education, and development.
+Why this dataset exists
+Real healthcare data is locked behind privacy laws, institutional agreements, and de-identification requirements. This dataset was purpose-built to fill that gap — providing a realistic, multi-format, interoperability-ready practice environment that mirrors the complexity of actual health system data without any of the legal friction.
+What makes it different
+The generation was deliberately structured across four separate batches to simulate real-world interoperability challenges:
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+Runs A & B generate the same patients in two different FHIR versions — R4 (current standard) and DSTU2 (legacy, still in production at many hospitals) — making this dataset ideal for practicing format migration and version translation.
+Runs C & D generate two independent patient populations, with 500 patients intentionally appearing in both — but with realistic data entry variations: name nicknames, birth date offsets of 1–2 days, address abbreviation differences, and phone number transpositions. A ground truth file is included, enabling objective precision/recall scoring of Master Patient Index (MPI) and record linkage algorithms.
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+Formats included
+FormatDescriptionFHIR R4 (JSON + NDJSON bulk)Current US national standard, US Core 6.1 compliantFHIR DSTU2 (JSON)Legacy version, widely deployed in older EHR systemsC-CDA (XML)Clinical document standard used in transitions of careCSVFlat-file export simulating legacy EHR database extractsPlain TextHuman-readable clinical summaries
+Patient population
+Patients are aged 45–90, living at time of generation, simulated in Texas. This age range targets chronic disease populations — the most clinically complex and interoperability-relevant cohort. All genders and a realistic demographic mix are included.
+HL7 v2
+Synthea does not natively generate HL7 v2 messages. This is a known gap in the tooling. HL7 v2 can be reconstructed from the FHIR bundles or CSV exports included in this dataset — a reconstruction exercise that is itself a practical interoperability skill.
+Intended use cases
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+FHIR API development and testing
+C-CDA parsing and transformation
+FHIR version migration (DSTU2 → R4)
+Master Patient Index and record linkage algorithm development and benchmarking
+Clinical analytics and population health queries
+Terminology validation and SNOMED/LOINC/RxNorm code testing
+Clinical decision support and CQL rule execution
+HL7 v2 message reconstruction from structured data