Looking back on our progress in 2024, I’m struck by the remarkable energy and growth our community has demonstrated. From the successful launch of our refreshed FHIR Community Process to the integration of AI-focused terminology codes, this year has been defined by our community's ability to evolve and expand while maintaining our core commitment to open, consensus-based standards development.
HL7’s global reach continues to expand with more than 87,000 active participants worldwide, including nearly 10,000 new contributors from 151 different countries joining us in 2024 alone. This growth isn't just about numbers; it represents diverse perspectives, fresh ideas and new solutions to interoperability challenges across the globe.
The launch of our community roadmap initiatives, guided by Daniel Bach as our Contributor Experience Lead, reflects HL7’s intentional commitment to cultivating an inclusive environment where everyone can contribute meaningfully. We’ve enhanced our recognition programs, refined our onboarding processes and continued our efforts to demystify HL7 standards for professionals beyond traditional interoperability experts.
Your participation drives this progress. Whether you’re submitting your first comment on a specification, leading a FHIR Connectathon track or serving as a work group co-chair, you’re part of a global brain trust that's accelerating healthcare transformation. In 2024, 40% of specification commenters were new voices—a healthy infusion of ideas that keeps our standards relevant and robust.
Community Engagement at Scale
The heartbeat of HL7 lies in our 35 work groups, which averaged 390 community calls each month in 2024, adding up to more than 5,000 hours of collaborative standards development.
This visualization of our work group activity throughout the year reveals the dynamic and interconnected nature of our community’s efforts.
BALLOTING
Our ballot process remains central to ensuring quality and consensus. In 2024, we conducted three ballot cycles covering 101 specification items, with an average of 121 participants providing feedback on each balloted item. This robust participation ensures our standards meet real-world implementation needs. Leadership opportunities continue to expand across our community:
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PROJECT FACILITATORS STEWARDING 81 ACTIVE PROJECTS
Project Facilitators are the point people for stewarding an HL7 project through to meet its objectives, including in many cases, developing or maintaining specifications.
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TRACK LEADS ENABLING 103 TRACKS ACROSS 3 FHIR CONNECTATHONS
Track Leads are those who organize, lead, and facilitate a track at an HL7 FHIR Connectathon.
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CO-CHAIRS SERVING 38 GOVERNANCE GROUPS
Co-Chairs provide the leadership, stewardship, and oversight of the governance group in which they serve, helping that community achieve its mission.
Notably, more than 40% of FHIR Connectathon track leads in 2024 were newcomers to that role, demonstrating our community’s commitment to welcoming fresh leadership.
In 2024, HL7 International published 56 new specification versions, maintaining our steady pace of innovation. The majority of these were FHIR-based specifications, reflecting the continued momentum behind FHIR as the foundation for modern healthcare interoperability.
Our HL7 Terminology (THO) infrastructure saw significant enhancements, including new codes for AI-assisted treatment and payment decisions, which was a timely response to emerging healthcare technologies. The Unified Terminology Governance process resolved numerous community-submitted updates, ensuring our vocabularies remain current and comprehensive.
The refreshed FHIR Community Process represents a significant evolution in how we support specification development beyond HL7’s formal balloting process. This voluntary program establishes consistent quality standards for FHIR specifications developed by government agencies, NGOs, and other organizations, reducing market confusion while improving interoperability outcomes.
Global Infrastructure and Innovation
Our auto-build pipeline now supports over 500 FHIR implementation guides worldwide, providing continuous integration builds for specification authors across the globe. The FHIR Product Team released 50 updates to the IG Publisher, 49 to the FHIR Validator, and 14 to the FHIR Validator GUI, responding to community needs and advancing specification quality.
In 2024, we’ve also significantly strengthened our technical infrastructure. The implementation of multi-factor authentication across all platforms enhances security, while our transition from MITRE to HL7 for FSH (FHIR Shorthand) tooling support ensures long-term sustainability of these essential community resources.
Behind the scenes, we’ve enhanced system resilience against security threats, improved our cloud infrastructure, and launched helpful tools like the Jira Dashboard Wizard and the XIG Index for navigating FHIR specification dependencies.
Looking Ahead
Several exciting developments await us in 2025. Our transition to a new mailing list platform (Sympa) will modernize our communication infrastructure, while backend improvements to hl7.org/fhir will enhance performance for our growing collection of 3.5 million FHIR specification files.
We continue to benefit from strategic funding relationships, particularly with the Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy/Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, enabling critical infrastructure development and standards advancement that serve the global community.
Closing Reflection
Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of life as “a creative synthesis of opposites in fruitful harmony.” This sentiment captures the essence of what makes our HL7 community special. We bring together diverse perspectives—clinical and technical, established and emerging, global and local—to create standards that transcend individual interests and serve the greater good of healthcare interoperability.
Your sustained engagement in this work reduces the activation energy for positive change across healthcare systems worldwide. The specifications we develop together aren’t just technical artifacts; they’re enablers of better care, more efficient systems, and improved health outcomes for people everywhere.
As we look toward to 2025, I’m energized by our community's capacity for innovation and collaboration. The challenges ahead, from AI integration to global health equity, will require our continued commitment to open, inclusive standards development. Together, we’re not just participants in the same field; we’re architects of healthcare’s digital future.
Thank you for your dedication, your expertise, and your commitment to the shared mission of interoperability. Here's to another year of meaningful progress and global impact.
For more detail about 2024, please read the full reports from our HL7 Divisions.
