Before there was the EHDS, there was health telematics, health IT, telemedicine, eHealth… and there was Bert Kabbes, a Dutch healthcare integration specialist who discovered Health level Seven (HL7 was just a few years old), saw its potential, and set upon bringing global standards and interoperability to the Netherlands. That was in the early 1990s.

Last December, Bert Kabbes passed, and the HL7 Netherlands community came together to celebrate his life. In a moving tribute to their founder, driving force, and inspiration, his friends and colleagues praised his efforts to convene and drive the Dutch HL7 affiliate (almost the first in the world), to advance global standards adoption in the Netherlands, and to drive connectivity and exchange of information in Dutch healthcare.

In this webinar, HL7 Europe would like to bring the European HL7 community together, newcomers as well as seasoned experts, to reflect on the wider implications and learnings from Bert’s journey, touching on themes of:

• The interplay of global standards and local implementation
• The work on maturing national affiliates and
• Paths towards building the HL7 community.

Featured speakers will include:

• René Spronk, Ringholm
• Jan-Eric Slot, HL7 Netherlands
• Robert Stegwee, CEN/TC251

Panellists will include:

• Alexander Henket, NICTIZ
• Catherine Chronaki, HL7 Europe
• Kai Heitmann, HL7 Germany

See also the presentation slides here.

The webinar was hold on 16 March 2026 and facilitated by Michael Strübin from HL7 Europe.

The HL7 Europe FHIR Base and Core IG is a foundational set of FHIR profiles that provide a consistent framework for healthcare data exchange across Europe, supporting the European Health Data Space (EHDS) by defining reusable ‘Base’ (flexible) and ‘Core’ (more constrained) profiles for common elements, ensuring interoperability while aligning with international standards like the International Patient Summary. The version 2.0.0 has been developed with the support of the Xt-EHR Joint Action, which provided expertise and alignment with European health policy priorities, and is currently out for ballot in the HL7 Europe community. In this webinar, HL7 Europe and Xt-EHR speakers will report on what’s new in version 2.0.0, explain how this aligns with Xt-EHR, and what will be the next steps.

In this webinar, the newest installment in our series on the FHIR IG ecosystem for the EHDS, you learn more about the interplay of international standards and the forthcoming specifications for the European Electronic Health Record Exchange Format (EHRxF) which the Commission will publish in March 2027.

Speakers will include:

• Rutt Lindström, TEHIK (EE) and HL7 Europe
• Daniel Karlsson, eHealth Agency (SE)
• Hynek Kružík, HL7 Europe
• Giorgio Cangioli, HL7 Europe

See also the presentation slides here.

The webinar was facilitated by Michael Strübin from HL7 Europe.

HL7 Europe held its 3rd Working Group Meeting 1-5 December in Cologne, Germany. During the week, 160 individual participants were seen, some of them for the whole week, some for one or two days.

The focus of the meeting was the work for the FHIR specifications for the priority use cases of the European Health Data Space EHDS including the Laboratory Report, the EU Core and Base Profiles, Medication, Patient Summary and Discharge Report. Many additional topics were addressed in the around 60 different sessions and tracks over the week such as EU Project Insights for I2X and MyHealth@MyHands, xShare, Hospitals on FHIR and Gravitate Health, Conformity Framework for the EHDS, Synthetic data, Terminology, an API for Health Data Spaces, Care Plans, FHIR Registries for Rare Diseases.

Whole day tracks covered the Common Cancer Model, the German FHIR and Terminology Community Day, and Imaging manifest and report.

Listen to the "State of the European Union in Digital Health" Keynote given by Henrique Martins, ICTE, Portugal, at the HL7 Europe Working Group Meeting Cologne, December 2025