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.

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 the vast 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.

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.

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

The organization that is the custodian of the person record.

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

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.

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 actually associated with the target resource.