2026 January HL7 FHIR Connectathon

The FHIR community vision is to enable global healthcare interoperability through the use of FHIR, ultimately driving improvements in health outcomes worldwide.
A cornerstone of this approach is the FHIR Connectathon, a recurring collaborative event where vendors, healthcare providers, administrators and the authors of the FHIR specification work side by side. These events provide a hands-on environment for testing and refining FHIR-based solutions.

To support rapid adoption and consistent implementation, a suite of test tools is made available to help developers learn how to implement the standard and validate their conformance to both the core specification and its Implementation Guides (IGs). A key strength of the FHIR community lies in its emphasis on reusability: IGs are designed to be deployed across multiple implementations, which reduces development time and costs while improving data quality and consistency.

As FHIR resources and IGs evolve, those in earlier stages of maturity remain open to discussion and revision. Connectathons play a crucial role in this process. When participants discover interoperability gaps, such as diverging interpretations of a specification or insufficient documentation, the feedback gathered often leads to concrete improvements in the FHIR standard itself.
Ultimately, the FHIR community thrives on transparency, collaboration and iterative refinement, ensuring that the standard continues to meet the dynamic needs of the global healthcare ecosystem.