Education

Adopting HL7 FHIR is not only a technical matter. It requires healthcare provider organizations to develop new capabilities in architecture, data governance, interoperability practices, and workforce skills.

Hospitals on FHIR contributes to this capability building by supporting healthcare providers that want to better understand and progressively adopt FHIR within their information systems and data strategies. While the initiative began with hospitals, the challenges addressed are shared by many types of healthcare organizations that produce or use clinical data. Laboratories, outpatient clinics, long-term care facilities, and research organizations managing clinical or real-world data often face similar questions when engaging with interoperability.

Education activities within Hospitals on FHIR therefore focus on helping provider organizations understand how FHIR can be integrated into real healthcare environments. The objective is not to treat FHIR purely as a technical specification, but to explore its implications for system architecture, governance, and operational practice.

Learning within the community is strongly grounded in experience. Many of the most valuable insights about interoperability emerge from real implementation journeys rather than from theoretical documentation alone. Hospitals on FHIR therefore promotes a community-driven learning model where healthcare providers can exchange perspectives, discuss challenges, and learn from each other’s experiences.

Through these exchanges, organizations can better understand the foundations of HL7 FHIR, explore different architectural approaches, and reflect on the organizational changes required to support interoperable services. This includes the development of internal skills, clearer governance of health data, and a better understanding of how interoperability fits into broader digital transformation efforts.

Hospitals on FHIR does not promote a single architecture or a predefined implementation path. Healthcare providers operate in diverse technical and organizational environments, and their transformation must remain realistic and sustainable. Education activities therefore aim to help organizations understand their current level of interoperability maturity, identify achievable next steps, and progressively build the capabilities required to operate interoperable services over time.

In this way, Hospitals on FHIR seeks to contribute to the gradual development of FHIR knowledge and interoperability capabilities across healthcare provider organizations.