Informed Patient — Development skill for Claude Code

Informed Patient

This Claude Skill provides a framework to help you use Claude to research medical evidence to inform specific health questions, primarily designed around use cases like trying to understand and organize questions about symptoms, preparing for an upcoming medical appointment, and gathering evidence for either differential diagnosis questions or condition progression.

When you ask a medical question, Claude will walk you through a semi-structured cognitive interview to elicit context for its search, then conduct a search following a set of guidelines for evidence robustness. The skill provides two potential search "modes": by default it uses a more structured search across a defined evidence source hierarchy, but can use an open search mode for scenarios where you raise a more complex questions that falls between conditions, when you want a more exploratory mode, or when the opinionated search results are thin.

Alongside searching and synthesizing sources, Claude will weigh the strength of evidence or relevant concerns according to a set of evidence "red flags." The results will be shared in a "health evidence review," including sources, search terms, and evidence red flags to be aware of, and questions generated from the exercise to bring to your healthcare team.

The aim of this skill is not to replace your healthcare team, but to guide your use of AI as a structured search tool around health information, help you advocate for yourself and your needs, and help you become an "informed patient."

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Installation

This repository provides two installation methods depending on your Claude client:

Claude Code (Plugin)

This repository is structured as a [Claude Code plugin](https://code.claude.com/docs/en/plugins). To install, run these commands in Claude Code:

1. Add the marketplace:

/plugin marketplace add https://github.com/DrCatHicks/informed-patient.git

1. Install the plugin:

/plugin install informed-patient@informed-p