AMSTERDAM, Netherlands – June 3, 2025 – openEHR International and Health Level Seven (HL7®) International today announced the successful conclusion of a highly productive joint workshop focused on exploring and advancing collaboration between their respective health data standards communities. The event, held in Amsterdam on 2-3 June 2025, brought together leaders from both organisations with experts from the wider community in a spirit of shared commitment to improving global health and research through enhanced interoperability.
Both openEHR and HL7 FHIR are community-driven standards, developed and enabled by dedicated global communities with diverse stakeholders including clinicians, informaticians, developers, and vendors. This shared foundation provides a powerful springboard for joint efforts to enable better healthcare delivery, foster innovation and accelerate vital research and development worldwide.
Discussions were overwhelmingly constructive, and characterised by a mutual curiosity and openness from members of both communities. The workshop culminated in the identification of five key strategic areas for future collaborative work, and underpinning enabling themes where closer strategic alignment between the openEHR and HL7 FHIR ecosystems can yield significant benefits for the wider healthcare community. An announcement will be made in due course as these five strategic areas are explored in more detail.
Rachel Dunscombe, CEO of openEHR International, stated, “This event has been a landmark moment, filled with energy and a clear vision for how our communities can work more synergistically. We are immensely encouraged by the enthusiasm of all involved towards developing a concrete, collaborative plan for future projects. As community-driven organisations, we share a commitment to collectively tackle the complex challenges in healthcare interoperability and data, for the benefit of patients, clinicians and researchers throughout the world.”
Daniel Vreeman, Chief Standards Development Officer of HL7 International, added “This collaboration is about the mutual benefit of bringing together the complementary strengths of HL7 and openEHR. The workshop highlighted many key areas where the communities, tools, and methodologies of both organisations can together advance interoperability that improves health around the world.”
Both organisations are committed to translating the positive momentum from this event into tangible actions that benefit the entire digital health ecosystem. The openEHR and HL7 FHIR communities will be updated regularly with the progress in these collaborative areas. Having established dedicated joint groups for each collaboration area, the two organisations will meet in 12 months’ time to discuss progress and future milestones.
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 www.openehr.org.
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 www.HL7.org.
Contact: Peter Bouvier, PR and comms, openEHR International PR@openehr.org
Media Contact for HL7 International:
Andrea Ribick
andrea@HL7.org
734-677-7777
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