About me
I’m Danny Englander.
I built this application with Claude AI and Claude Code, often from my phone without typing a word, using Wispr Flow AI for dictation connected to Claude Desktop and my local development environment. If you’d like to learn more about this site and how I built it, or if you have any other questions, feel free to contact me.
Why “Rare Zebra”?
Doctors are trained on a saying: “When you hear hoofbeats, think of horses, not zebras.” It’s a reminder to consider the common explanation first, since common conditions are common. But sometimes the hoofbeats really do belong to a zebra, and the rare disease community has adopted the zebra as its symbol for exactly that reason. If you have a rare disease, you’re the zebra: the diagnosis that took longer to reach, if it’s been reached at all. That’s where this site’s name comes from.
What this is
Rare Zebra is a prototype search interface for looking up rare diseases, built with Astro, Tailwind CSS, daisyUI, and Pagefind for instant client-side search.
It currently covers a sample of the diseases catalogued by Orphadata, Orphanet’s free, open-access data service, not the full catalogue. Not finding a disease here doesn’t mean it isn’t real or rare; it means the sample hasn’t reached it yet.
What this is for
This project exists to demonstrate a fast, faceted way to search structured rare-disease data: by name, synonym, or symptom, and filtered by body system, inheritance pattern, age of onset, or rarity. It’s a working interface built on real data, not a finished product.
What this isn’t
This site is not a substitute for medical advice, and it isn’t affiliated with or endorsed by Orphanet. It’s an independently built interface over data Orphanet makes freely available under a CC BY 4.0 license. If you or someone you know is dealing with a rare disease, please talk to a qualified healthcare provider or a patient organization for that condition.
Questions or feedback
Use the contact page to get in touch.