An open format for animal records
Records that travel with the animal.
Why it matters
Required for accreditation. Needed for care
The requirement
AZA accreditation standard 1.4.12 requires that when an animal is transferred, all of its data in the sending institution's records system, including historical data from previous holding institutions, accompany it so that the receiving institution can provide the best possible care. The standard prefers a computer-readable format and does not favor any particular records system.
The need
Accredited or not, a receiving facility needs an animal's history from the day it arrives: current medications and known drug reactions, recent procedures and anesthesia, diet, behavioral baselines, training and welfare context. Continuity of care matters most in the first weeks after a transfer, which is when missing information does the most harm.
Current practice meets neither well. Transfers rely on exported PDFs, spreadsheets and email; the receiving team re-enters what it can, and some information arrives late or not at all. What is missing is a shared format that every records system can write and read, and no single vendor can create one alone.
How it works
From export to import
- 1
Export
The sending facility's records system creates a passport containing the record types the facility chooses to share: a single zip file holding passport.json and the media files the records refer to.
- 2
Transfer
The file is sent by any existing means, such as email, a shared drive or a transfer portal. The format places no requirements on how it is delivered.
- 3
Import
The receiving system imports the records into its own database. Each record carries a stable reference, which prevents duplicate imports and preserves the identity of records from earlier holders.
- 4
View
Where the receiving system cannot yet import a passport, the free passport viewer displays the complete record in a web browser without uploading it, and can save a readable copy as a PDF.
Contents
The records that accompany the animal
- Identity
- Species and taxonomic identifiers, sex history, birth or hatch date, rearing, identifiers with the primary one marked, and parents.
- Medical
- Cases and clinical notes, prescriptions and doses, laboratory results with reference ranges, anesthesia records, medical alerts, chronic conditions, drug reactions and necropsy reports.
- Husbandry
- Diets by meal, feeding records, enrichment, measurements with the animal's own ranges, physiological readings and contraception.
- Welfare and behavior
- Welfare assessments with each question and answer, action plans, observations and animal notes.
- Training
- Trained behaviors and their progress, training sessions, and the trainers involved.
- Transaction history
- Acquisitions, dispositions and moves, with the holder and owner after each.
- Media
- Photographs, images and documents, each linked to the record it belongs to, with a digital fingerprint recorded in the data file so a receiving system can confirm the file is unchanged.
- Provenance
- Who entered each record, where and when, and which facility exported the passport.
From Pebble's passport
A drug reaction record from the sample passport of Pebble, a fictitious harbor seal. The date includes a time zone, originRef maintains the record's identity through later transfers, and audit records who entered it.
{
"drugReactions": [
{
"originRef": "drugReaction.41",
"recordDateTime": "2019-05-08T14:10:33-07:00",
"drug": {
"name": "Amoxicillin-Clavulanate 250 mg"
},
"reactionLevel": "Mild",
"comments": "Both seals had loose stool for two days on the 2019 course; not a contraindication.",
"audit": "2019-05-08T14:10:33-07:00 Okafor, Grace"
}
]
}Design principles
How the format is designed
-
Open
Openly licensed and free to implement, with no fees, royalties or patent restrictions. The specification is developed in a public repository.
-
Vendor-neutral
The format contains no vendor-specific fields and requires no connection to any external service. Any system that can read and write JSON can implement it. Values specific to one system can be carried in a separate, namespaced extensions block.
-
Versioned, with a defined 1.0
Version 0.1 remains open to change while other systems review and implement it. Version 1.0 will be declared when a second, independent records system reads or writes passports and the review group has approved the specification. From 1.0, changes within a major version will be additive only: readers ignore fields they do not recognize, older readers continue to work, and newer readers accept older files.
-
Sender-controlled
A passport contains only the record types the sending facility chooses to include. No record is shared without that decision.
-
Structured data
Quantities include their units, ratings include both the score and its label, and dates include their time zone offset, so the receiving system can use the values directly rather than re-enter them.
-
Persistent record identity
Each record keeps the reference assigned by the system that first recorded it. Records from a previous holder arrive identified as that holder's records and are not duplicated when the animal moves again.
-
Readable without an importer
A passport consists of one data file and its media files. A package may also include a short human-readable summary, and the passport viewer can display any passport. Both are conveniences; the data file is the authoritative record.
The specification is being developed publicly at github.com/animal-passport/spec. Two sample passports can be opened in the passport viewer.
Who is behind it
The initial draft was written by Tracks Software. The format is developed publicly under its own GitHub organization, with the intention of transferring stewardship to an independent body as other systems adopt it.
Help shape the format
Follow the specification on GitHub, or tell us how transfers work at your facility. Registrars, veterinarians, animal care staff and software developers each have a unique perspective and the format should reflect each one.