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Provenance Statements (FHIR Resource)

A Provenance statement is a FHIR record that describes Agents (actors), Entities (resources), and Activities (processes) involved in creating, transforming, or influencing a resource.

Purpose​

Provenance provides:

  • Traceability: Complete supply chain record for content
  • Accountability: Who performed what actions
  • Auditability: When and why changes occurred
  • Trust basis: Foundation for CTF trust scores

FHIR Provenance Structure​

Agents​

Who was involved:

Entities​

What resources were involved:

  • Source resources (input)
  • Derived resources (output)
  • Related resources (context)

Activities​

What happened:

Time​

When it occurred:

  • Timestamp
  • Period (start/end)

Reason​

Why it happened:

  • Purpose
  • Policy
  • Request

Provenance Chains​

Resources may have multiple provenance records forming a chain:

Raw ePI
  ↓ (retrieved by Connector)
[Provenance 1: Connector retrieval]
  ↓
Cached ePI
  ↓ (annotated by Preprocessor)
[Provenance 2: Preprocessing]
  ↓
p(ePI)
  ↓ (personalized by Lens)
[Provenance 3: Focusing]
  ↓
f(ePI)

Generation in FOSPS​

Provenance is automatically created by:

Storage​

Provenance records are stored in:

  • FHIR Server alongside resources
  • Audit Log for immutable backup
  • Blockchain ledger for hash verification

Inspection​

Provenance can be viewed using: