This document supports interchangeability of digital signatures and the prevention of incorrect or illegal digital signatures by providing minimum requirements and formats for generating and verifying digital signatures and related certificates.

This document describes the common technical, operational, and policy requirements that need to be addressed to enable digital certificates to be used in protecting the exchange of healthcare information within a single domain, between domains, and across jurisdictional boundaries. Its purpose is to create a platform for global interoperability. It specifically supports digital certificate enabled communication across borders but could also provide guidance for the national or regional deployment of digital certificates in healthcare.

It defines the provable compliance with a PKI policy necessary in the domain of healthcare. This document specifies a method of adopting long-term signature formats to ensure integrity and non-repudiation in long-term electronic preservation of healthcare information.

This document provides Healthcare specific PKI (HPKI) profiles of digital signature based on the ETSI Standard and the profile of the ISO/ETSI Standard specified in CAdES, XAdES, and PAdES.