Joint Statement from HL7 International and openEHR International
openEHR International and Health Level Seven (HL7®) International have announced the successful conclusion of their second annual joint meeting, held in Dublin on 12 and 13 May 2026. Building on the momentum established at last year’s inaugural Amsterdam meeting, this year’s event brought together an even larger and more diverse global audience from the openEHR and HL7 FHIR® communities, alongside representatives from other leading standards organisations including SNOMED International.
Both openEHR and HL7 FHIR are community-driven standards, developed and enabled by dedicated global communities of clinicians, informaticians, developers, researchers, vendors and policymakers. The Dublin summit demonstrated the growing maturity of collaboration between these groups, with a shared commitment to improving healthcare delivery, accelerating research, and enabling better global interoperability.
The meeting reflected a growing international recognition that collaboration between SDOs is essential to achieving truly interoperable, scalable and clinically meaningful digital health ecosystems. While the core focus remained on advancing collaboration between openEHR and HL7 FHIR, discussions expanded to include alignment with the global policy landscape.
Members of the joint working groups established at the Amsterdam meeting in 2025 reported substantial progress across technical alignment between standards. The next phase will broaden this progress into governance, education, policy, and tooling.
Rachel Dunscombe, CEO of HL7 International, stated, “What began in Amsterdam as an important conversation has evolved into a genuine movement towards practical collaboration between standards communities. The scale and energy of this year’s event in Dublin reflects the appetite across the global digital health sector for closer cooperation and shared problem-solving. The question is no longer whether standards bodies will converge and collaborate, but how and when.”
Jordi Piera Jimenez, CEO of openEHR International, added, “This year’s meeting showed clear evidence that collaboration between standards organisations delivers tangible value for implementers, clinicians and patients. Bringing together the complementary strengths of HL7 FHIR, openEHR, SNOMED and others creates enormous opportunities to simplify interoperability and improve health outcomes globally.”
Plans for next year’s meeting include broader integration of standards and deeper practical application to create a permanent international forum for strategic collaboration across our global health standards ecosystem.
Both organisations remain committed to translating the outcomes of the Dublin meeting into practical actions and measurable progress, while expanding this collaboration to include other standards partners for the benefit of the wider digital health community. Updates on joint initiatives and working group activities will continue to be shared regularly over the coming year.
About openEHR International: openEHR International is a global non-profit organisation that develops and maintains open standards and clinical models for health data. It enables the creation of lifelong, person-centric health records and supports a vibrant ecosystem of applications and tools, driven by a worldwide community of healthcare professionals, researchers, and industry partners. For more information, visit openEHR International.
About Health Level Seven International (HL7): Health Level Seven® International (HL7) is an ANSI-accredited, not-for-profit standards developing organisation with the mission of empowering global health interoperability. With affiliates in over 30 countries, HL7’s global membership envisions a world in which everyone can securely access and use the right data when and where they need it. Widely implemented by vendor and health care systems, and required by governing bodies around the world, HL7 standards deliver solutions for health information technology, including HL7® Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR®), Version 2 (V2) and Clinical Document Architecture (CDA®). For more information, visit HL7 International.
Media Contact:
Peter Bouvier
PR and Communications, openEHR International
PR@openehr.org
Website: openEHR International
Media Contact for HL7 International:
Andrea Ribick
andrea@HL7.org
734-677-7777
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