# Hard/physical delete

**Category:** [New to openEHR?](https://discourse.openehr.org/c/new-to-openehr/13)
**Created:** 2023-11-09 10:16 UTC
**Views:** 483
**Replies:** 3
**URL:** https://discourse.openehr.org/t/hard-physical-delete/4630

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## Post #1 by @Callum_Anderson

Hello all, I'm fairly new to OpenEHR and have been using EHRBase. I'm comfortable with composition versioning and logical/soft delete markers.

However, we have an (NHS) organisational requirement to provide the ability to physically/hard delete records on occasion. For example, under GDPR a patient has the right to erasure.

I believe that we could simply remove or re-assign the subject identifier on the EHR? However, if we wanted to hard-delete a composition, is this possible?

Apologies if this has been asked before, I couldn't find it via search. Thanks in advance.

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## Post #2 by @vidi42

@Callum_Anderson EHRbase provides an Admin API https://ehrbase.readthedocs.io/en/latest/03_development/07_admin/index.html for these kind of operations.
See for compositions https://ehrbase.readthedocs.io/en/latest/03_development/07_admin/02_ehr_composition/index.html#delete-admin-ehr-id-composition-composition-id

However, this comes with risks if access is not properly configured or mistakes are made.

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## Post #3 by @ian.mcnicoll

Both ehrbase and better support these hard deletes via a seperste admin api i believe for both compositions  and overall ehr. There is sn appetite to standardise some of these kind of  calls.

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## Post #4 by @Callum_Anderson

Thank you both, yes, you're quite right - I forgot to mention that EHRBase does indeed provide an Admin API. However, the documentation states that it is for development purposes only - *not* production systems. And I believe it's not activated for the [latest EHRBase image](https://hub.docker.com/r/ehrbase/ehrbase) which is what we've been using.

Absolutely it might be a solution though, although not without its risks.

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**Canonical:** https://discourse.openehr.org/t/hard-physical-delete/4630
**Original content:** https://discourse.openehr.org/t/hard-physical-delete/4630