In September of 2021, the Journal of the American Medical Association published an article entitled “Emoji for the Medical Community” describing the importance of Emoji in the health of our patients. We believe that the further inclusion of a more unified set of medically accurate Emoji would be critical for patient communication, patient care and to represent health in a modern and accessible way.

Emoji are a critical part of global dialogue. As a standardized set of pre-loaded, curated, digital set of images that work across platforms—mobile, tablet, desktop; Windows, Apple iOS, or Android—Emoji possess the power of standardization, universality and familiarity to our patients, with increasing usage in both informal and professional settings. Emoji can facilitate communication of patient symptoms and concerns or other clinically relevant information in a digitally native way. Pictorial representations such as visual analogue scales (VAS) are already widely used in medicine to measure and communicate the intensity or frequency of symptoms but lack the uniformity and digital nature of Emoji possess.

The category of medical emoji is already in existence. Brain � was approved as part of Unicode 10.0 in 2017 and added to Emoji 5.0 in 2017. Anatomical Heart and Lung was approved as part of Unicode 13.0 in 2020 and added to Emoji 13.0 in 2020. X-Ray was approved as part of Unicode 14.0 in 2021 and added to Emoji 14.0 in 2021.

Unified set of 10 medical emoji

Yet despite these Emoji, critically important medical Emoji including the white blood cell, kidney, liver, spine, stomach, intestine, EKG, blood bag, pill pack , and weight scale do not yet exist. Multiple medical societies have already endorsed the need for these medical Emoji. The website MedicalEmoji.org has extensively collected medical and patient representation society endorsements.

We believe that healthcare providers and patients will note the distinctiveness of the organs and medical emoji that can have multiple usages both within medicine and to communicate about daily health needs with patients. We’ll be able to say, for example, it’s ok to have appendicitis to a child. Ultimately, this is an opportunity to promote, tolerance, inclusion and education about medicine in a modern, accessible, and international way. We, the undersigned, are writing to urge the Unicode Consortium to approve a unified set of 10 medical Emoji. 

Lai D, Lee J8, He S. Emoji for the Medical Community—Challenges and Opportunities. JAMA. 2021;326(9):795–796. doi:10.1001/jama.2021.8409