5.5 Serialization Order of Elements
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## 5.5 Serialization Order of Elements

The CDA schema requires elements to be encoded in a specified order, which may be different than the order in which they are described in the templates. The serialization of elements shall be in accordance with the HL7 CDA Hierarchical Description. In particular, attention must be paid to the serialization order of elements defined in sibling templates (see Section 5.1.2).

### Note

For example, the various header templates are siblings, specifying sets of elements at the same hierarchical level. These elements of different templates must be encoded in their appropriate serialized order in the object instance - all templateID elements from the document template and all header templates first, followed by the elements of the clinicalDocument class in their prescribed order, followed by the participations in their prescribed order, followed by act relationships in their prescribed order.

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