Standards

Establishing Metadata and Payload Patterns for Direct

Developing a Standard for how to define Payloads and Metadata for Transport (Commonly known as “Common Conveyance”)

Direct Secure Messaging in practice is content-agnostic and messages on the network are for the most part undifferentiated. In the absence of standards for metadata that communicate the purpose of the message, receiving workflows are unable to route messages to the appropriate users for the use case. Furthermore, receivers also are able to process only a few file formats, and in some cases must parse the attached files to access key metadata elements such as patient demographics.

When new use cases emerge, senders will repurpose a Consolidated CDA document to carry whatever information is required by the use case, regardless of whether this standards based attachment structure makes sense for the data being communicated. This is done so that any receiver can be expected to at least accept the message as processing this file format is required under the ONC Certification Rule even in the absence of any metadata otherwise.

The success of the Event Notifications via the Direct Standard® specification has provided evidence that a flexible approach based upon the pattern established for event notifications could serve a variety of use cases for standards work underway including the Referrals via FHIR® over Direct and Release of Information specifications. This would allow the transport of a variety of attachments but set standards for how the basic metadata requirements of the ultimate receiving endpoints could be satisfied.

At the same time, the model will support technically unsophisticated receiving systems lacking the ability to process either attachments or metadata by always requiring inclusion of human readable information outside of the XDM packaging when XDM payload format is used and in a required mime-part when the Context IG payload format is used.

Find more information about the DS2024_07 Establishing Metadata and Payload Patterns for Direct Consensus Body on this page.

This DirectTrust® Standards effort is focused on creating a payload and metadata model which can be used to serve additional applicable future use cases for the Direct Standard. The work will be based upon the pattern developed for the Event Notifications via the Direct Standard specification and will allow for a wide range of attachments and overall purposes, but will standardize metadata expectations while ensuring that the most typical Direct Secure Messaging endpoints can process and understand essential message content regardless of technical capabilities. The effort will also develop standards for what specific information needs to be provided in a specification that relies on the pattern. It also will include ways to recommend recipient functional information processing requirements for “middle actor” (relevant for the three-actor use case) or “intended recipient” Information Recipients.