Definition: A party that originates the Act and therefore has responsibility for the information given in the Act and ownership of this Act.

Example: the report writer, the person writing the act definition, the guideline author, the placer of an order, the EKG cart (device) creating a report etc. Every Act should have an author. Authorship is regardless of mood always actual authorship.

Examples of such policies might include:

• The author and anyone they explicitly delegate may update the report;
• All administrators within the same clinic may cancel and reschedule appointments created by other administrators within that clinic;

A party that is neither an author nor a party who is extended authorship maintenance rights by policy, may only amend, reverse, override, replace, or follow up in other ways on this Act, whereby the Act remains intact and is linked to another Act authored by that other party.

Definition: A person, non-person living subject, organization or device that who actually and principally carries out the action. Device should only be assigned as a performer in circumstances where the device is performing independent of human intervention. Need not be the principal responsible actor.

Exampe: A surgery resident operating under supervision of attending surgeon, a search and rescue dog locating survivors, an electronic laboratory analyzer or the laboratory discipline requested to perform a laboratory test. The performer may also be the patient in self-care, e.g. fingerstick blood sugar. The traditional order filler is a performer. This information should accompany every service event.

Note: that existing HL7 designs assign an organization as the playing entity of the Role that is the performer. These designs should be revised in subsequent releases to make this the scooping entity for the role involved.