Demographics and administrative information about a person independent of a specific health-related context.

Need to track persons potentially across multiple roles.

The Person resource does justice to person registries that keep track of persons regardless of their role. The Person resource is also a primary resource to point to for people acting in a particular role such as SubjectofCare, Practitioner, and Agent. Very few attributes are specific to any role and so Person is kept lean. Most attributes are expected to be tied to the role the Person plays rather than the Person himself. Examples of that are Guardian (SubjectofCare), ContactParty (SubjectOfCare, Practitioner), and multipleBirthInd (SubjectofCare).

Identifier for a person within a particular scope.

People are known by a variety of ids. Some institutions maintain several, and most collect identifiers for exchange with other organizations concerning the person. Examples are national person identifier and local identifier.

Whether this person's record is in active use.

Need to be able to mark a person record as not to be used because it was created in error.

A name associated with the person.

Need to be able to track the person by multiple names. Examples are your official name and a partner name.

Person may have multiple names with different uses or applicable periods.

A contact detail for the person, e.g. a telephone number or an email address.

People have (primary) ways to contact them in some way such as phone, email.

Person may have multiple ways to be contacted with different uses or applicable periods. May need to have options for contacting the person urgently and also to help with identification.

Administrative Gender.

Needed for identification of the person, in combination with (at least) name and birth date. Gender of person drives many clinical processes.

The gender might not match the biological sex as determined by genetics, or the individual's preferred identification. Note that for both humans and particularly animals, there are other legitimate possibilities than M and F, though a clear majority of systems and contexts only support M and F.

The birth date for the person.

Age of person drives many clinical processes, and is often used in performing identification of the person. Times are not included so as to not confuse things with potential timezone issues.

At least an estimated year should be provided as a guess if the real DOB is unknown.

Indicates if the individual is deceased or not.

If there's no value in the instance, it means there is no statement on whether or not the individual is deceased. Most systems will interpret the absence of a value as a sign of the person being alive.

One or more addresses for the person.

May need to keep track of person's addresses for contacting, billing or reporting requirements and also to help with identification.

Person may have multiple addresses with different uses or applicable periods.

This field contains a person's most recent marital (civil) status.

Many countries maintain a register of births, deaths and marriages, and this would simplify that interaction

An image that can be displayed as a thumbnail of the person to enhance the identification of the individual.

A language which may be used to communicate with the person about his or her health.

If a person does not speak the local language, interpreters may be required, so languages spoken and proficiency are important things to keep track of both for person and other persons of interest.

If no language is specified, this implies that the default local language is spoken. If you need to convey proficiency for multiple modes, then you need multiple Person.Communication associations. For animals, language is not a relevant field, and should be absent from the instance. If the Patient does not speak the default local language, then the Interpreter Required Standard can be used to explicitly declare that an interpreter is required.

Note that this property should not be used to update any linked/logically linked practitioner resources as it serves as a language that can be used to communicate with patients - however it may be used to inform the value on practitioner, along with their role at the organization (with the practitioner's permission)

The language which may be used to communicate with the individual.

Most systems in multilingual countries will want to convey language. Not all systems actually need the regional dialect.

The language is commonly represented using the ISO-639-1 alpha code in lower case for the language, optionally followed by a hyphen and the ISO-3166-1 alpha code for the region in upper case. For example, "en" for English, or "en-US" for American English versus "en-AU" for Australian English, sgn-US for American Sign Language, sgn-NL for Dutch Sign Language, etc.

Not all systems actually code this but instead have it as free text. Hence CodeableConcept instead of code as the data type.

Indicates whether or not the person prefers this language (over other languages he masters up a certain level).

People that master multiple languages up to certain level may prefer one or more, i.e. feel more confident in communicating in a particular language making other languages sort of a fall back method.

This language is specifically identified for communicating healthcare information.

The organization that is the custodian of the person record.

Need to know who recognizes this person record, manages and updates it.

Link to a resource that concerns the same actual person.

The resource to which this actual person is associated.

Level of assurance that this link is associated with the target resource.