Other Areas

By default, Synthea contains demographics, zip codes, providers, names, and costs for the entire United States, post-processed from publicly available files.

You can modify these files or have Synthea use an alternative files by altering the src/main/resources/synthea.properties file:

# Default demographics is every city in the US
generate.demographics.default_file = geography/demographics.csv
generate.geography.zipcodes.default_file = geography/zipcodes.csv

# Default provider files (1 of 10 files)
generate.providers.hospitals.default_file = providers/hospitals.csv

# Default costs, to be used for pricing something that we don't have a specific price for
generate.costs.default_procedure_cost = 500.00
generate.costs.default_medication_cost = 255.00
generate.costs.default_encounter_cost = 125.00
generate.costs.default_immunization_cost = 136.00

You can find detailed instructions on each of these file formats on the Synthea Wiki:

• Demographics file contains city-level distributions of Gender, Race, Age, Income, and Education which all play a role in health access, outcomes, and costs. https://github.com/synthetichealth/synthea/wiki/Demographics-for-Other-Areas
• Zip or postal code file contains postal codes and geographic locations (latitude and longitude) for each location. https://github.com/synthetichealth/synthea/wiki/Zip-or-Postal-Codes
• Provider files contains information and locations (latitude and longitude) for each provider location. https://github.com/synthetichealth/synthea/wiki/Provider-Data
• Names file contains language-specific family names and first names by gender. It also contains names suitable for street addresses. https://github.com/synthetichealth/synthea/wiki/Name-Data
• Cost files contain costs for different types of Encounters, Procedures, Medications, and Immunizations. https://github.com/synthetichealth/synthea/wiki/Cost-Data

Abridged Example for Shrewsbury, Shropshire, United Kingdom

Districting and addresses in the United Kingdom differ from the United States. Let's start with the demographics file:

,COUNTY,NAME,STNAME,POPESTIMATE2015,CTYNAME,TOT_POP,TOT_MALE,TOT_FEMALE,WHITE,HISPANIC,BLACK,ASIAN,NATIVE,OTHER,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,00..10,10..15,15..25,25..35,35..50,50..75,75..100,100..150,150..200,200..999,LESS_THAN_HS,HS_DEGREE,SOME_COLLEGE,BS_DEGREE
1,1,Shrewsbury,West Midlands,2620,Shropshire,486300,0.489,0.511,0.985,0,0.001,0.004,0,0,0.063,0.063,0.063,0.052,0.052,0.052,0.052,0.052,0.076,0.076,0.076,0.076,0.076,0.035,0.035,0.035,0.035,0.035,0.133333333,0.133333333,0.133333333,0.147225,0.147225,0.147225,0.147225,0.1,0.01,0.001,0.18,0.387,22.35,22.35

Next we need to create postal codes suitable to Shrewsbury, so we edit the zip codes file:

,USPS,ST,NAME,ZCTA5,LAT,LON
0,West Midlands,WMS,Shrewsbury,SY1,52.7081,-2.7549
1,West Midlands,WMS,Shrewsbury,SY2,52.7083,-2.7546
2,West Midlands,WMS,Shrewsbury,SY3,52.7089,-2.7543

Finally, we need to provide at least one hospital for our Salopians, so we edit the hospitals file:

,id,name,address,city,state,zip,county,phone,type,ownership,emergency,quality,LAT,LON
0,010001,Royal Shrewsbury Hospital,Mytton Oak Rd,Shrewsbury,WMS,SY3 8XQ,Shropshire,01743261000,NHS Teaching Hospital,Government - Hospital District or Authority,Yes,5,52.7091,-2.7931

For now, let's leave the names and cost files as-is.

./run_synthea -s 0 -p 1 "West Midlands" Shrewsbury

...abridged...

Loaded 70 modules.
Running with options:
Population: 1
Seed: 0
Location: Shrewsbury, West Midlands
Min Age: 0
Max Age: 140
1 -- Brigitte394 Stark857 (50 y/o F) Shrewsbury, West Midlands DECEASED
1 -- Jeanine128 Gleason633 (57 y/o F) Shrewsbury, West Midlands 
{alive=1, dead=1}

Check the FHIR output of Jeanine128 Gleason633:

...abridged...
        "address": [
          {
            "extension": [
              {
                "url": "http://hl7.org/fhir/StructureDefinition/geolocation",
                "extension": [
                  {
                    "url": "latitude",
                    "valueDecimal": -2.7546
                  },
                  {
                    "url": "longitude",
                    "valueDecimal": 52.7083
                  }
                ]
              }
            ],
            "line": [
              "560 Corkery Annex Suite 36"
            ],
            "city": "Shrewsbury",
            "state": "West Midlands",
            "postalCode": "SY1",
            "country": "US"
          }
        ],
...abridged...

It looks like we have generated a person in Shrewsbury... US? Looks like we need a little more work to do. :)