openmd.com APIopenmd.com ↗
Access OpenMD's medical dictionary, abbreviations, word parts, health site directory, and research guides via 11 structured API endpoints.
curl -X GET 'https://api.parse.bot/scraper/e3dde5ae-7ae1-4454-a7e5-127c2fd5e843/get_dictionary_term?term=heart' \ -H 'X-API-Key: $PARSE_API_KEY'
Retrieve full definitions and metadata for a specific medical term. Returns definitions from multiple medical sources, pronunciation, category, etymology, images, and related videos when available. Coverage is strongest for anatomy terms; some disease terms may return fewer definitions.
| Param | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| termrequired | string | Medical term to look up (e.g. 'heart', 'lung', 'diabetes'). |
{
"type": "object",
"fields": {
"name": "string, canonical name of the term",
"term": "string, the queried term",
"images": "array of image objects with src, alt, and title",
"videos": "array of video objects with title, url, source, and duration",
"category": "string, medical category (e.g. Anatomy)",
"definitions": "array of definition objects with source, text, and source_detail",
"pronunciation": "string, phonetic pronunciation"
},
"sample": {
"data": {
"name": "heart",
"term": "heart",
"images": [
{
"alt": "Wikimedia",
"src": "https://openmd.com/data/images/103/1004680_01.jpg",
"title": "Wikimedia"
}
],
"videos": [
{
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8P_XtR0OrQU",
"title": "Cardiovascular System: Anatomy of the...",
"source": "Lecturio",
"duration": "3:37"
}
],
"category": "Anatomy",
"definitions": [
{
"text": "A hollow muscular organ which receives the blood from the veins and pumps it into the arteries.",
"source": "CDISC Terminology",
"source_detail": "Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium (CDISC), 2021"
}
],
"pronunciation": "heart [ hahrt ]"
},
"status": "success"
}
}About the openmd.com API
The OpenMD API exposes 11 endpoints covering medical term definitions, abbreviations, word parts, a curated health site directory, and structured research guides. Use get_dictionary_term to retrieve definitions from multiple medical sources, phonetic pronunciation, images, and related videos for a given term. The API also surfaces specialized content like dangerous prescription abbreviations and organized health resource directories by category.
Medical Dictionary Endpoints
The get_dictionary_term endpoint accepts a term parameter (e.g. heart, diabetes) and returns a definitions array where each object includes source, text, and source_detail — so you can see which medical reference each definition comes from. Additional fields include pronunciation, category (e.g. Anatomy), images (with src, alt, and title), and videos (with title, url, source, and duration). Coverage is strongest for anatomy terms; some disease or syndrome entries may return fewer definition sources. search_dictionary handles cases where you don't know the exact canonical term: it returns either a direct match with full details or a list of candidate term links.
Abbreviations and Word Parts
get_abbreviations_by_letter and get_word_parts_by_letter both accept an optional letter parameter (A–Z) and return arrays of abbreviation-meaning or word_part-meaning pairs respectively. These are useful for building medical terminology tools, EHR helpers, or educational flashcard systems. browse_dictionary_by_letter similarly lists all dictionary terms starting with a given letter, with each result including the term string and its url.
Health Site Directory and Research Guides
The directory side of the API starts with get_directory_categories, which returns all available category slug values (e.g. cardiology, neurology). Pass a slug to get_directory_category to get the sites listed under that category, each with name, url, description, and domain. Research guides follow the same two-step pattern: list_research_guides returns guide slug values, and get_research_guide returns the full structured content as typed blocks (text, heading, list, table).
Prescription and Safety Content
Two dedicated endpoints handle prescription-related content. get_prescription_abbreviations returns a structured guide to shorthand used in prescriptions — useful for patient-facing apps or clinical education tools. get_dangerous_abbreviations returns the guide to abbreviations flagged as error-prone, including tables identifying which abbreviations to avoid and why. Both return the same content block format as get_research_guide.
- Build a medical terminology lookup tool using
get_dictionary_termto display multi-source definitions and pronunciation. - Generate alphabetical term lists for a medical education app with
browse_dictionary_by_letter. - Populate an abbreviation decoder feature in an EHR or clinical notes tool using
get_abbreviations_by_letter. - Create a word-parts reference for medical students using
get_word_parts_by_letter(roots, prefixes, suffixes). - Build a curated health resource directory organized by specialty using
get_directory_categoriesandget_directory_category. - Surface prescription error warnings in a clinical decision support tool using
get_dangerous_abbreviations. - Integrate structured research guide content into a patient education platform using
get_research_guide.
| Tier | Price | Credits/month | Rate limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0/mo | 100 | 5 req/min |
| Hobby | $30/mo | 1,000 | 20 req/min |
| Developer | $100/mo | 5,000 | 250 req/min |
One credit = one API call regardless of which marketplace API you call. Exceeding the rate limit returns a 429 response. Authenticate with the X-API-Key header.
Does OpenMD have an official developer API?+
What does `get_dictionary_term` return, and are definitions always from multiple sources?+
definitions array where each item includes source, text, and source_detail, so you can see which reference each definition comes from. Coverage varies: anatomy terms typically have more definition sources than disease or pharmacology entries, which may return only one or two definitions.Can I retrieve full article-level content for every term, including all linked diseases and drug interactions?+
Does the API support full-text search across the entire dictionary, or only exact-term lookups?+
search_dictionary accepts a query string and returns either a direct match with full details or a list of candidate term links. It does not currently support wildcard patterns, relevance-ranked full-text search, or filtering by category. You can fork the API on Parse and revise it to add more advanced search filtering.Are the research guide content blocks structured enough to render programmatically?+
get_research_guide and the prescription/dangerous abbreviation endpoints return a content array where each block has an explicit type field — text, heading, list, or table — along with the corresponding data. This lets you render or parse each section type independently without custom HTML parsing.