Provenance information that describes the activity that led to the creation of a set of resources. This information can be used to help determine their reliability or trace where the information in them came from. The focus of the provenance resource is record keeping, audit and traceability, and not explicit statements of clinical significance.

Some parties may be duplicated between the target resource and its provenance. For instance, the prescriber is usually (but not always) the author of the prescription resource. This resource is defined with close consideration for W3C Provenance.

The Reference(s) that were generated by the activity described in this resource. A provenance can point to more than one target if multiple resources were created/updated by the same activity.

Target references are usually version specific, but may not be, if a version has not been assigned or if the provenance information is part of the set of resources being maintained (i.e. a document). When using the RESTful API, the identity of the resource may not be known (especially not the version specific one); the client may either submit the resource first, and then the provenance, or it may submit both using a single transaction. See the notes on transaction for further discussion.

The period during which the activity occurred.

The period can be a little arbitrary; where possible, the time should correspond to human assessment of the activity time.

The instant of time at which the activity was recorded.

This can be a little different from the time stamp on the resource if there is a delay between recording the event and updating the provenance and target resource.

The reason that the activity was taking place.

Where the activity occurred, if relevant.

Policy or plan the activity was defined by. Typically, a single activity may have multiple applicable policy documents, such as patient consent, guarantor funding, etc.

An agent takes a role in an activity such that the agent can be assigned some degree of responsibility for the activity taking place. An agent can be a person, a piece of software, an inanimate object, an organization, or other entities that may be ascribed responsibility.

Several agents may be associated (i.e. has some responsibility for an activity) with an activity and vice-versa.

The role that the participant played.

The type of the participant.

If the type is "Resource" then the resource itself was the participant. If the type is a type of resource, then the entity identified by the resource is the participant.

Identity of participant. May be a logical or physical uri and maybe absolute or relative.

identity may be a reference to a resource or to something else, depending on the type.

Human-readable description of the participant.

An entity used in this activity.

How the entity was used during the activity.

The type of the entity. If the entity is a resource, then this is a resource type.

If the type is "resource" then the resource itself was the participant. If the type is a type of resource, then the entity identified by the resource is the participant.

Identity of participant. May be a logical or physical uri and maybe absolute or relative.

identity may be a reference to a resource or to something else, depending on the type.

Human-readable description of the entity.

The entity is attributed to an agent to express the agent's responsibility for that entity, possibly along with other agents. This description can be understood as shorthand for saying that the agent was responsible for the activity which generated the entity.

A digital signature on the target Reference(s). The signature should match a Provenance.agent.reference in the provenance resource. The signature is only added to support checking cryptographic integrity of the resource, and not to represent workflow and clinical aspects of the signing process, or to support non-repudiation.

Whether the content is XML or JSON, the representation is as a base64 of the XML signature of the resource.