{"schema_version":1,"experiment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp03_full320_20260801","cell_id":"layer_decay_and_expiration_management__medicine_healthcare","trajectory_id":"R","attempt_index":0,"archetype_slug":"layer_decay_and_expiration_management","domain_slug":"medicine_healthcare","decision":"CANDIDATE","problem_id":"obsolete_clinical_decision_support_artifacts_remain_active","causal_lever_id":"lifecycle_state_gated_clinical_content_activation","proposal":{"problem":"Hospitals accumulate successive versions of order sets, alerts, protocols, and reference content. Obsolete artifacts can remain active or discoverable as if current, while indiscriminate deletion can prevent reconstruction of past clinical decisions. INFERENCE: this is independently recognizable as clinical-content lifecycle failure, not merely a storage shortage.","actors_substrate":["patients affected by content-guided care","clinicians using clinical decision support","clinical content owners","health-informatics and EHR administrators","patient-safety, compliance, legal, and records personnel","versioned order sets, alerts, protocols, and reference artifacts"],"observable_state":"Multiple temporally ordered clinical-content versions lack consistently inspectable current, superseded, archived, held, quarantined, and destroyed states; stale versions remain selectable or prominent, and owners cannot readily establish dependencies or restorability.","consequence":"Clinicians may select outdated guidance; maintainers face clutter and unresolved ownership; premature removal can erase evidence needed for incident review, legal obligations, or reconstruction.","affected_objective":"Keep actionable clinical guidance current and unambiguous while preserving proportionate auditability, recoverability, and compliance at bounded operational cost.","structural_mapping":[{"archetype_element":"sequential deposits","domain_realization":"Successive releases of order sets, alerts, protocols, and linked reference content","claim_kind":"INFERENCE"},{"archetype_element":"stale layers masquerading as current","domain_realization":"Superseded clinical content remains active, searchable, or selectable without a conspicuous lifecycle state","claim_kind":"HYPOTHESIS"},{"archetype_element":"deletion can break dependencies and reconstruction","domain_realization":"Past encounters, audit inquiries, templates, and downstream rules may still reference retired versions","claim_kind":"INFERENCE"},{"archetype_element":"managed lifecycle governance","domain_realization":"Class-specific review, expiry, supersession, archival, reversible removal, and exception controls govern clinical-content activation","claim_kind":"HYPOTHESIS"}],"component_map":[{"component":"layer_inventory_and_identity_map","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Canonical registry of every clinical artifact and version"},{"component":"deposition_order_and_age_index","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Creation, approval, activation, and supersession chronology"},{"component":"retention_policy_matrix","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Artifact-class rules for active, archived, and destruction periods"},{"component":"decay_function_or_aging_rule","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Age raises review priority but never independently establishes clinical invalidity"},{"component":"expiration_trigger_definition","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Review-by date, source-guideline change, owner departure, or successor activation triggers reassessment"},{"component":"layer_value_and_risk_score","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Transparent triage using clinical reach, staleness evidence, dependency, sensitivity, and reconstruction value"},{"component":"dependency_and_reconstruction_check","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Pre-removal trace of encounters, workflows, rules, links, and audit uses"},{"component":"pruning_or_archival_pathway","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Refresh, deactivate, supersede, archive, quarantine, or destroy"},{"component":"preservation_exception_register","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Named safety, research, historical, evidentiary, and investigation exceptions"},{"component":"deletion_audit_and_rollback_window","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Recorded soft deletion with time-bounded restoration"},{"component":"resource_budget_and_storage_tier","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Fast access for active content and cheaper archival storage for inactive versions"},{"component":"review_cadence_and_revalidation_loop","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Risk-based owner attestation and governance review cadence"},{"component":"legal_hold_or_compliance_override","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Hold suspends destruction without restoring clinical authority"},{"component":"hot_warm_cold_access_state","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Active, readily retrievable archive, and deep archive states"},{"component":"orphan_layer_detection","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Detection of versions with no live workflow or reconstruction dependency"},{"component":"supersession_marker","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Visible retired status and pointer to the approved successor"},{"component":"layer_compaction_candidate_flag","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Flag archival packages for lossless bundling while preserving version identity"},{"component":"rehydration_or_restore_procedure","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Controlled restoration of archived content for authorized review, not automatic clinical reactivation"},{"component":"deletion_impact_estimate","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Estimate affected workflows, encounters, investigations, and recovery difficulty"},{"component":"stale_context_detector","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Signals such as superseding guidance, broken links, changed formulary, or lapsed owner approval"}],"mechanism_dispositions":[{"slug":"age_weighted_value_score","disposition":"considered_rejected","contribution_type":"NONE","adaptation_or_rejection":"Reject composite age-discounted authority: old clinical content may remain valid and a precise score could conceal judgment. Use auditable factors only for review ordering.","counterfactual_removal":"No material loss; triggers and governance can prioritize review without one scalar score."},{"slug":"archive_restore_test","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"TEST_DESIGN","adaptation_or_rejection":"Sample archived versions across formats and ages; verify fidelity, linkage to historical encounters, access controls, and restoration latency.","counterfactual_removal":"Archival could silently become irretrievable, defeating reconstruction and making deactivation unsafe."},{"slug":"cache_eviction_rule","disposition":"incompatible","contribution_type":"NONE","adaptation_or_rejection":"Clinical authority and retention cannot be determined by fast-tier capacity or recent access.","counterfactual_removal":"None; ordinary storage management remains separate."},{"slug":"dependency_safe_delete_check","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"SAFETY_GUARDRAIL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Gate destruction on live-system checks for encounter, workflow, rule, audit, and external-reference dependencies; unresolved coverage blocks deletion.","counterfactual_removal":"Cleanup could break care workflows or historical reconstruction."},{"slug":"lifecycle_storage_tiering_policy","disposition":"selected_supporting","contribution_type":"OPERATIONAL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Move inactive versions to controlled archival tiers without changing their legal status or reactivating them.","counterfactual_removal":"The causal safety effect remains, but retaining reconstructable history becomes costlier."},{"slug":"log_rotation_and_cleanup_job","disposition":"incompatible","contribution_type":"NONE","adaptation_or_rejection":"Clinical artifacts are content-governed versions, not a homogeneous append-only stream safely purged by generation position.","counterfactual_removal":"None."},{"slug":"retention_schedule","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"CORE_CAUSAL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Map clinical-artifact classes to minimum/maximum retention, disposition, accountable owner, and periodically reviewed holds.","counterfactual_removal":"Expiry and preservation decisions lose consistent authority and exceptions can become invisible or permanent."},{"slug":"soft_delete_quarantine_window","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"SAFETY_GUARDRAIL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Deactivate first, quarantine recoverably, audit the action, and size the window by impact; privacy or mandatory-destruction rules can hard-gate duration.","counterfactual_removal":"A mistaken bulk retirement could become irreversible before detection."},{"slug":"stale_layer_detection_dashboard","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"CORE_CAUSAL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Inventory versions and surface evidence of semantic staleness to named owners; it cannot autonomously declare clinical invalidity.","counterfactual_removal":"Stale active artifacts remain difficult to detect and prioritize."},{"slug":"time_to_live_ttl_policy","disposition":"selected_supporting","contribution_type":"OPERATIONAL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Use TTL only as a review/attestation deadline or automatic deactivation trigger for explicitly temporary content, never as autonomous destruction.","counterfactual_removal":"Governance still works, but temporary content and overdue reviews require manual sweeps."},{"slug":"tombstone_or_deletion_marker","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"SAFETY_GUARDRAIL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Keep a durable minimal marker stating retired or destroyed status, reason, date, and successor while excluding deleted clinical payload.","counterfactual_removal":"Missing versions become ambiguous, references can dangle, and stale replicas may appear authoritative."}],"causal_chain":["Inventory and identity resolution expose the version stack and accountable owners.","Staleness signals and expiry events move artifacts into review rather than directly into deletion.","Governance applies class retention, holds, clinical validation, value/risk factors, and dependency checks.","Approved successors receive authority; old versions are conspicuously deactivated and marked, removing stale guidance from ordinary selection.","Tiering and quarantine preserve proportionate reconstruction and rollback before authorized destruction.","Restore drills and periodic revalidation reveal archive or policy failure and feed corrections back into the lifecycle."],"baseline":"Content owners periodically review artifacts through tickets or spreadsheets; obsolete items are manually disabled, while many versions remain active or retained indefinitely because ownership, dependencies, and deletion consequences are unclear.","nearest_rival":"A mandatory periodic clinical-content recertification program that deactivates anything not reapproved, without integrated dependency tracing, archival restoration testing, exception governance, or reversible deletion.","authority_safety":{"affected_parties":["patients","clinicians","content owners","historical-record subjects","investigators and auditors"],"decision_authority":"A designated clinical-content governance body approves clinical activation and retirement; records/privacy/legal officers control retention, holds, and destruction within their mandates. Automation may flag, deactivate preauthorized temporary content, or execute approved transitions but may not validate guidance or override holds.","authorized_first_step":"Run a 12-week shadow pilot on one service line and at most 50 non-emergency order sets: inventory versions, generate stale candidates, trace dependencies, simulate dispositions, and restore a sample archive. No patient-facing activation, autonomous clinical validation, or permanent deletion is allowed.","excluded_actions":["autonomous destruction based only on age, access, or score","changing patient-specific orders or completed records","treating archived content as approved for current care","overriding legal holds, privacy duties, or clinical-governance decisions"],"halt_rollback":"Halt on any missed live dependency, incorrect current-versus-superseded classification, unauthorized disclosure, failed restoration, or pilot artifact reaching clinical production. Disable transitions, restore quarantined artifacts, preserve audit evidence, and require governance review before resumption."}},"negative_tests":{"strongest_counterevidence":"The apparent accumulation may be largely required version history already hidden from clinical selection; if users cannot encounter stale versions and current restoration and retention controls are reliable, lifecycle intervention adds administration without reducing clinical risk.","analogy_break":"Clinical validity does not decay monotonically with age, and low access may reflect rarity rather than low value. Unlike interchangeable storage layers, a rarely used artifact may be essential in an emergency; human clinical validation and regulatory authority cannot be replaced by lifecycle arithmetic.","failure_condition":"The proposal fails if it cannot distinguish clinical authority from archival retention, resolve material dependencies, enforce holds, or restore quarantined/archived versions with fidelity.","problem_falsifier":"A scoped audit finds no obsolete artifact active or misleadingly discoverable, all versions have accountable owners and explicit states, dependencies and holds are inspectable, and restore tests meet targets.","intervention_falsifier":"Compared with the ordinary baseline in the shadow pilot, lifecycle governance does not improve correct stale-candidate identification or time-to-owner disposition, or it produces any missed dependency/current-content misclassification; archive restore success also fails the predefined 100% sampled-artifact fidelity gate.","risks":["Valid rare-use content could be deactivated because age or low access is mistaken for obsolescence.","Lifecycle metadata, archive copies, or tombstones could expose sensitive information.","Automated dependency discovery may miss external, runtime, or undocumented consumers.","Quarantine may conflict with mandatory deletion, while premature destruction may defeat investigation or reconstruction.","Extra review workload may create alert-like fatigue and superficial attestations.","Tiering may delay urgent authorized historical retrieval."]},"null_rationale":null,"classification":{"candidate_kind":"MECHANISM_COMPOSITION","prior_art_status":"UNSEARCHED","evidence_maturity":"HYPOTHESIS"},"revision_change_log":{"revision_kind":"ORIGINAL","prior_problem_id":null,"prior_causal_lever_id":null,"problem_changed":false,"causal_lever_changed":false,"conceptual_changes":[],"operational_changes":[],"repairs_addressed":[]},"confidence":0.86,"generator_notes":"Closed-book structural inference from the supplied packet. Empirical prevalence and benefit claims remain hypotheses; prior art was not searched."}