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Patient

Patient is a person in a clinical context — the target of a MedicalWebPage, the subject of a case report, or the audience for a medical guideline. It dual-inherits from MedicalAudience (so it fits under medicalAudience) and from Person (so the same node carries name / gender / birthDate).

Full example of schema.org/Patient json-ld markup

The markup is verified as valid with Rich Results Test from Google.

Highlight legend:Required by GoogleRecommendedOptional
schema.org/Patient
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "MedicalWebPage",
  "name": "Managing Type 2 Diabetes on Metformin: Patient Guide",
  "medicalAudience": {
    "@type": "Patient",
    "name": "Adults with diagnosed Type 2 diabetes on metformin monotherapy",
    "healthCondition": {
      "@type": "MedicalCondition",
      "name": "Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus",
      "code": {
        "@type": "MedicalCode",
        "codingSystem": "ICD-10",
        "codeValue": "E11"
      }
    },
    "drug": {
      "@type": "Drug",
      "name": "Metformin",
      "nonProprietaryName": "metformin hydrochloride"
    }
  }
}
</script>

Direct properties (3)

  • diagnosis: one or more MedicalCondition nodes representing differential diagnoses.
  • drug: Drug currently prescribed or under consideration.
  • healthCondition: MedicalCondition the patient has been diagnosed with (past tense; use this for confirmed conditions vs the diagnosis working list).

Inherited from MedicalAudience: nothing direct (pass-through). From Person: the full identity set — name, gender, birthDate, height, weight, etc. Note Patient is not an audience for personal-health data; it's the schema.org concept of "a patient in the content", useful for case reports and patient-education content that wants to describe the subject.

Minimal valid version

The smallest markup that still produces a valid Patient entity. Use it as the floor. Reach for the advanced example above when you want search engines and AI agents to understand more about your content.

schema.org/Patient (minimal)
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Patient",
  "name": "Adults with Type 2 diabetes",
  "healthCondition": { "@type": "MedicalCondition", "name": "Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus" }
}
</script>

Google rich results this unlocks

Markup matching this example makes your page eligible for the following Google Search rich results. The primary target drives the required / recommended property classification in the advanced code block above.

  • Medical content (feeds AI citations + health knowledge panels)
    Google docs

Common Patient mistakes

Mistakes that pass validation but silently fail to earn rich results or mislead consumers walking the graph. Avoid these and your markup will be ahead of most sites in the wild.

  1. 01

    Patient for an actual identified person

    Wrong
    Patient with PHI-level detail on a real individual
    Right
    Only use for content audience / case studies; never publish PHI as schema

    Patient is the content concept, not an EHR record. Publishing real patient data as structured data is a HIPAA violation in the US and GDPR in the EU.

  2. 02

    diagnosis and healthCondition mixed up

    Wrong
    Using diagnosis for a confirmed condition
    Right
    diagnosis = differential working list; healthCondition = confirmed

    The distinction matters for case-report authoring tools that render the differential separately from confirmed diagnoses.

  3. 03

    drug as free text

    Wrong
    "drug": "metformin"
    Right
    Drug node with name and nonProprietaryName

    The structured Drug node lets consumers match to the pharmaceutical knowledge graph; free text loses the link.

Schema properties in this example

PatientMedicalAudiencePersonMedicalWebPagemedicalAudiencenamehealthConditionMedicalConditioncodeMedicalCodecodingSystemcodeValuedrugDrugnonProprietaryNamediagnosis

Also mentioned in 1 other example

Patient also appears in MedicalWebPage. See the full Patient schema page for every reference.

About the example data

A MedicalWebPage case study on Type 2 diabetes management, targeting adult patients already on metformin.

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