Embedding

In addition to standalone execution, Synthea^TM can also be embedded in other applications.

Dependency Configuration

Synthea releases (starting at version 2.5.0) will be published on Maven Central. Snapshots (starting at version 2.5.0-SNAPSHOT) are published on the Sonatype snapshots repository.

Below is an example of declaring a dependency on a Synthea release using a Maven pom.xml file:

<repositories>
  <repository>
    <id>maven.central</id>
    <url>http://repo.maven.apache.org/maven2</url>
    <releases>
      <enabled>true</enabled>
    </releases>
    <snapshots>
      <enabled>false</enabled>
    </snapshots>
  </repository>
</repositories>
<dependencies>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>org.mitre.synthea</groupId>
    <artifactId>synthea</artifactId>
    <version>2.6.1</version>
  </dependency>
</dependencies>

Below is an example of declaring a dependency on a Synthea snapshot release using a Maven pom.xml file:

<repositories>
  <repository>
    <id>oss.sonatype.org-snapshot</id>
    <url>http://oss.sonatype.org/content/repositories/snapshots</url>
    <releases>
      <enabled>false</enabled>
    </releases>
    <snapshots>
      <enabled>true</enabled>
    </snapshots>
  </repository>
</repositories>
<dependencies>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>org.mitre.synthea</groupId>
    <artifactId>synthea</artifactId>
    <version>2.6.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
  </dependency>
</dependencies>

Documentation

Javadocs for the master branch are available at https://synthetichealth.github.io/synthea/build/javadoc/index.html

File Output

In standalone use, Synthea generates files in an "output" subdirectory of the application working directory. The example below illustrates how to programmatically generate 10 patient records from a simple command line application.

package com.example.generator;

import org.mitre.synthea.engine.Generator;
import org.mitre.synthea.helpers.Config;

public class Main {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        Generator.GeneratorOptions options = new Generator.GeneratorOptions();
        options.population = 10;
        Config.set("exporter.hospital.fhir.export", "false");
        Config.set("exporter.practitioner.fhir.export", "false");
        Generator generator = new Generator(options);
        generator.run();
    }
    
}

In the above, the Config class is used to set Common Configuration options and the GeneratorOptions object is used to control the demographics of the population.

JSON Integration

Synthea can also be used to create JSON patient records that are passed as a String to the invoking application. When used in this way, Synthea is invoked on a separate thread and generated records are retrieved from a blocking queue. The code below illustrates how to use Synthea in this way.

// Configure options and override default file output configuration
Generator.GeneratorOptions options = new Generator.GeneratorOptions();
options.population = 1000;
Config.set("exporter.fhir.export", "false");
Config.set("exporter.hospital.fhir.export", "false");
Config.set("exporter.practitioner.fhir.export", "false");
Exporter.ExporterRuntimeOptions ero = new Exporter.ExporterRuntimeOptions();
ero.enableQueue(Exporter.SupportedFhirVersion.R4);

// Create and start generator
Generator generator = new Generator(options, ero);
ExecutorService generatorService = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(1);
generatorService.submit(() -> generator.run());

// Retrieve the generated records
int recordCount = 0;
while(recordCount < options.population) {
  try {
    String jsonRecord = ero.getNextRecord();
    recordCount++;
    processRecord(jsonRecord);
  } catch (InterruptedException ex) {
    break;
  }
}

// Shutdown the generator
generatorService.shutdownNow();

Note the use of the Config class to disable file generation. If this is omitted, files will also be written to the "output" subdirectory.