6.1.2 Digital Signatures

FHIR Infrastructure Work Group

Maturity Level: N/A

Standards Status: Trial Use

This specification recommends the use of W3C Digital Signatures or JSON Digital Signatures for digital signatures. Resources can be signed using the Provenance resource to carry a detached digital signature . The Signature datatype is available to support various signature types including non-repudiation purposes. Further details on creation and validation of Signatures are defined.

In addition, documents may be signed using an enveloped signature. A specification for enveloped signature is profiled in the IHE DSG profile .

Neither of these definitions prohibits policies that accept the use of other ways of using digital signatures or scanned wet signatures.

Trial-Use Note: The use of signatures with RESTful interfaces is a poorly understood area, and we would welcome reports of implementation experience. See discussion on use of Digital Signature in FHIR

Feedback is welcome here .