openEHR International and HL7 International 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 June 2-3, 2025, brought together leaders from both organizations 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 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (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 health care delivery, foster innovation and accelerate vital research and development worldwide.
Discussions were overwhelmingly constructive, and characterized 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 health care community.
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 toward developing a concrete, collaborative plan for future projects. As community-driven organizations, we share a commitment to collectively tackle the complex challenges in health care 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 organizations can together advance interoperability that improves health around the world."
Both organizations are committed to translating the positive momentum from this event into tangible actions that benefit the entire digital health ecosystem. The openEHR and HL7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR®) communities will be updated regularly with the progress in these collaborative areas. Having established dedicated joint groups for each collaboration area, the two organizations will meet in 12 months’ time to discuss progress and future milestones.
