Describes an actor - a human or an application that plays a role in data exchange, and that may have obligations associated with the role the actor plays.

A reference to a set of rules that were followed when the resource was constructed, and which must be understood when processing the content. Often, this is a reference to an implementation guide that defines the special rules along with other profiles etc.

Asserting this rule set restricts the content to be only understood by a limited set of trading partners. This inherently limits the usefulness of the data in the long term. However, the existing health eco-system is highly fractured, and not yet ready to define, collect, and exchange data in a generally computable sense. Wherever possible, implementers and/or specification writers should avoid using this element. Often, when used, the URL is a reference to an implementation guide that defines these special rules as part of its narrative along with other profiles, value sets, etc.

These resources do not have an independent existence apart from the resource that contains them - they cannot be identified independently, nor can they have their own independent transaction scope. This is allowed to be a Parameters resource if and only if it is referenced by a resource that provides context/meaning.

This should never be done when the content can be identified properly, as once identification is lost, it is extremely difficult (and context dependent) to restore it again. Contained resources may have profiles and tags in their meta elements, but SHALL NOT have security labels.

May be used to represent additional information that is not part of the basic definition of the resource and that modifies the understanding of the element that contains it and/or the understanding of the containing element's descendants. Usually modifier elements provide negation or qualification. To make the use of extensions safe and managable, there is a strict set of governance applied to the definition and use of extensions. Though any implementer is allowed to define an extension, there is a set of requirements that SHALL be met as part of the definition of the extension. Applications processing a resource are required to check for modifier extensions.

Modifier extensions SHALL NOT change the meaning of any elements on Resource or DomainResource (including cannot change the meaning of modifierExtension itself).

There can be no stigma associated with the use of extensions by any application, project, or standard - regardless of the institution or jurisdiction that uses or defines the extensions. The use of extensions is what allows the FHIR specification to retain a core level of simplicity for everyone.

Modifier extensions allow for extensions that cannot be safely ignored to be clearly distinguished from the vast majority of extensions which can be safely ignored. This promotes interoperability by eliminating the need for implementers to prohibit the presence of extensions. For further information, see the definition of modifier extensions.

A natural language name identifying the actor definition. This name should be usable as an identifier for the module by machine processing applications such as code generation.

The name is not expected to be globally unique. The name should be a simple alphanumeric type name to ensure that it is machine-processing friendly.

Support human navigation and code generation.

A short, descriptive, user-friendly title for the actor definition.

This name does not need to be machine-processing friendly and may contain punctuation, white-space, etc.

The status of this actor definition. Enables tracking the life-cycle of the content.

Allows filtering of actor definitions that are appropriate for use versus not.

​See guidance around (not) making local changes to elements here.

The lifecycle status of an artifact.

A Boolean value to indicate that this actor definition is authored for testing purposes (or education/evaluation/marketing) and is not intended to be used for genuine usage.

Allows filtering of actor definitions that are appropriate for use versus not.

Enables experimental content to be developed following the same lifecycle that would be used for a production-level actor definition.

A free text natural language description of the actor.

This description can be used for a general description of the actor, and which covers why it was defined.

Whether the actor represents a human or an appliction.

The type of actor - system or human.

Describes an actor - a human or an application that plays a role in data exchange, and that may have obligations associated with the role the actor plays.

The logical id of the resource, as used in the URL for the resource. Once assigned, this value never changes.

Within the context of the FHIR RESTful interactions, the resource has an id except for cases like the create and conditional update. Otherwise, the use of the resouce id depends on the given use case.

The metadata about the resource. This is content that is maintained by the infrastructure. Changes to the content might not always be associated with version changes to the resource.

A reference to a set of rules that were followed when the resource was constructed, and which must be understood when processing the content. Often, this is a reference to an implementation guide that defines the special rules along with other profiles etc.

Asserting this rule set restricts the content to be only understood by a limited set of trading partners. This inherently limits the usefulness of the data in the long term. However, the existing health eco-system is highly fractured, and not yet ready to define, collect, and exchange data in a generally computable sense. Wherever possible, implementers and/or specification writers should avoid using this element. Often, when used, the URL is a reference to an implementation guide that defines these special rules as part of its narrative along with other profiles, value sets, etc.

The base language in which the resource is written.

Language is provided to support indexing and accessibility (typically, services such as text to speech use the language tag). The html language tag in the narrative applies to the narrative. The language tag on the resource may be used to specify the language of other presentations generated from the data in the resource. Not all the content has to be in the base language. The Resource.language should not be assumed to apply to the narrative automatically. If a language is specified, it should it also be specified on the div element in the html (see rules in HTML5 for information about the relationship between xml:lang and the html lang attribute).

IETF language tag for a human language

A human-readable narrative that contains a summary of the resource and can be used to represent the content of the resource to a human. The narrative need not encode all the structured data, but is required to contain sufficient detail to make it "clinically safe" for a human to just read the narrative. Resource definitions may define what content should be represented in the narrative to ensure clinical safety.

Contained resources do not have a narrative. Resources that are not contained SHOULD have a narrative. In some cases, a resource may only have text with little or no additional discrete data (as long as all minOccurs=1 elements are satisfied). This may be necessary for data from legacy systems where information is captured as a "text blob" or where text is additionally entered raw or narrated and encoded information is added later.

These resources do not have an independent existence apart from the resource that contains them - they cannot be identified independently, nor can they have their own independent transaction scope. This is allowed to be a Parameters resource if and only if it is referenced by a resource that provides context/meaning.

This should never be done when the content can be identified properly, as once identification is lost, it is extremely difficult (and context dependent) to restore it again. Contained resources may have profiles and tags in their meta elements, but SHALL NOT have security labels.

May be used to represent additional information that is not part of the basic definition of the resource. To make the use of extensions safe and managable, there is a strict set of governance applied to the definition and use of extensions. Though any implementer can define an extension, there is a set of requirements that SHALL be met as part of the definition of the extension.

There can be no stigma associated with the use of extensions by any application, project, or standard - regardless of the institution or jurisdiction that uses or defines the extensions. The use of extensions is what allows the FHIR specification to retain a core level of simplicity for everyone.

May be used to represent additional information that is not part of the basic definition of the resource and that modifies the understanding of the element that contains it and/or the understanding of the containing element's descendants. Usually modifier elements provide negation or qualification. To make the use of extensions safe and managable, there is a strict set of governance applied to the definition and use of extensions. Though any implementer is allowed to define an extension, there is a set of requirements that SHALL be met as part of the definition of the extension. Applications processing a resource are required to check for modifier extensions.

Modifier extensions SHALL NOT change the meaning of any elements on Resource or DomainResource (including cannot change the meaning of modifierExtension itself).

There can be no stigma associated with the use of extensions by any application, project, or standard - regardless of the institution or jurisdiction that uses or defines the extensions. The use of extensions is what allows the FHIR specification to retain a core level of simplicity for everyone.

Modifier extensions allow for extensions that cannot be safely ignored to be clearly distinguished from the vast majority of extensions which can be safely ignored. This promotes interoperability by eliminating the need for implementers to prohibit the presence of extensions. For further information, see the definition of modifier extensions.

An absolute URI that is used to identify this actor definition when it is referenced in a specification, model, design or an instance; also called its canonical identifier. This SHOULD be globally unique and SHOULD be a literal address at which an authoritative instance of this actor definition is (or will be) published. This URL can be the target of a canonical reference. It SHALL remain the same when the actor definition is stored on different servers.

Can be a urn:uuid: or a urn:oid: but real http: addresses are preferred. Multiple instances may share the same URL if they have a distinct version.

The determination of when to create a new version of a resource (same url, new version) vs. defining a new artifact is up to the author. Considerations for making this decision are found in Technical and Business Versions.

In some cases, the resource can no longer be found at the stated url, but the url itself cannot change. Implementations can use the meta.source element to indicate where the current master source of the resource can be found.

Allows the actor definition to be referenced by a single globally unique identifier.

A formal identifier that is used to identify this actor definition when it is represented in other formats, or referenced in a specification, model, design or an instance.

Allows externally provided and/or usable business identifiers to be easily associated with the module.

The identifier that is used to identify this version of the actor definition when it is referenced in a specification, model, design or instance. This is an arbitrary value managed by the actor definition author and is not expected to be globally unique. For example, it might be a timestamp (e.g. yyyymmdd) if a managed version is not available. There is also no expectation that versions can be placed in a lexicographical sequence.

There may be different actor definition instances that have the same identifier but different versions. The version can be appended to the url in a reference to allow a reference to a particular business version of the actor definition with the format [url]|[version]. The version SHOULD NOT contain a '#' - see Business Version.

Indicates the mechanism used to compare versions to determine which is more current.

If set as a string, this is a FHIRPath expression that has two additional context variables passed in - %version1 and %version2 and will return a negative number if version1 is newer, a positive number if version2 and a 0 if the version ordering can't be successfully be determined.

A natural language name identifying the actor definition. This name should be usable as an identifier for the module by machine processing applications such as code generation.

The name is not expected to be globally unique. The name should be a simple alphanumeric type name to ensure that it is machine-processing friendly.

Support human navigation and code generation.

A short, descriptive, user-friendly title for the actor definition.

This name does not need to be machine-processing friendly and may contain punctuation, white-space, etc.

The status of this actor definition. Enables tracking the life-cycle of the content.

Allows filtering of actor definitions that are appropriate for use versus not.

​See guidance around (not) making local changes to elements here.

The lifecycle status of an artifact.

A Boolean value to indicate that this actor definition is authored for testing purposes (or education/evaluation/marketing) and is not intended to be used for genuine usage.

Allows filtering of actor definitions that are appropriate for use versus not.

Enables experimental content to be developed following the same lifecycle that would be used for a production-level actor definition.

The date (and optionally time) when the actor definition was last significantly changed. The date must change when the business version changes and it must change if the status code changes. In addition, it should change when the substantive content of the actor definition changes.

The date is often not tracked until the resource is published, but may be present on draft content. Note that this is not the same as the resource last-modified-date, since the resource may be a secondary representation of the actor definition. Additional specific dates may be added as extensions or be found by consulting Provenances associated with past versions of the resource.

​See guidance around (not) making local changes to elements here.

The name of the organization or individual responsible for the release and ongoing maintenance of the actor definition.

Usually an organization but may be an individual. The publisher (or steward) of the actor definition is the organization or individual primarily responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of the actor definition. This is not necessarily the same individual or organization that developed and initially authored the content. The publisher is the primary point of contact for questions or issues with the actor definition. This item SHOULD be populated unless the information is available from context.

Helps establish the "authority/credibility" of the actor definition. May also allow for contact.

Contact details to assist a user in finding and communicating with the publisher.

May be a web site, an email address, a telephone number, etc.

​See guidance around (not) making local changes to elements here.

A free text natural language description of the actor.

This description can be used for a general description of the actor, and which covers why it was defined.

The content was developed with a focus and intent of supporting the contexts that are listed. These contexts may be general categories (gender, age, ...) or may be references to specific programs (insurance plans, studies, ...) and may be used to assist with indexing and searching for appropriate actor definition instances.

When multiple useContexts are specified, there is no expectation that all or any of the contexts apply.

Assist in searching for appropriate content.

A legal or geographic region in which the actor definition is intended to be used.

It may be possible for the actor definition to be used in jurisdictions other than those for which it was originally designed or intended.

DEPRECATION NOTE: For consistency, implementations are encouraged to migrate to using the new 'jurisdiction' code in the useContext element. (I.e. useContext.code indicating http://terminology.hl7.org/CodeSystem/usage-context-type#jurisdiction and useContext.valueCodeableConcept indicating the jurisdiction.)

Countries and regions within which this artifact is targeted for use.

Explanation of why this actor definition is needed and why it has been designed as it has.

This element does not describe the usage of the actor definition. Instead, it provides traceability of ''why'' the resource is either needed or ''why'' it is defined as it is. This may be used to point to source materials or specifications that drove the structure of this actor definition.

A copyright statement relating to the actor definition and/or its contents. Copyright statements are generally legal restrictions on the use and publishing of the actor definition.

...

Consumers must be able to determine any legal restrictions on the use of the actor definition.

A short string (<50 characters), suitable for inclusion in a page footer that identifies the copyright holder, effective period, and optionally whether rights are resctricted. (e.g. 'All rights reserved', 'Some rights reserved').

The (c) symbol should NOT be included in this string. It will be added by software when rendering the notation. Full details about licensing, restrictions, warrantees, etc. goes in the more general 'copyright' element.

Defines the content expected to be rendered in all representations of the artifact.

Whether the actor represents a human or an appliction.

The type of actor - system or human.

Documentation about the functionality of the actor.

In general terms, the description desribes what the actor is, and this element describes what the actor does (or is expected to do).

A reference to additional documentation about the actor, but description and documentation.

The capability statement for the actor (if the concept is applicable).

A url that identifies the definition of this actor in another IG (which IG must be listed in the dependencies). This actor inherits all the obligations etc. as defined in the other IG.