HL7 Europe is a not-for-profit Foundation established in Brussels in 2010 with the aim to address European standardisation requirements in digital health serving as the European office of HL7 International. The mission of HL7 Europe is to provide standards that empower global health data interoperability to realise its vision of a world in which everyone can securely access and use the right health data when and where they need it. It works in close cooperation with 22 national HL7 Affiliates across Europe and supports the creation of health information technology standards that are widely and easily used enabling interoperability in healthcare.

Specific objectives in collaboration with European Affiliates are:

• to promote and encourage the use of HL7 frameworks and protocol specifications that serve the needs of the European community by health systems and service providers. 
• to provide education services, promote tools and facilitate testing and certification. 
• to enable high quality, cost-effective use of information systems in the widest variety of health and healthcare related environments. 

HL7 encompasses the complete life cycle of a standards specification including the development, adoption, market recognition, utilisation, and adherence.

Notable and broadly adopted HL7 standards are HL7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) and HL7 Clinical Document Architecture (CDA).

HL7 has more than 40 Working Groups (WGs) developing HL7 standards, many of which involve clinical content. HL7 supports standards development and implementation with professional certification on each of the key standards families.

Recently, HL7 Europe has experienced significant growth and expects to grow further with the demands of the European Health Data Space (EHDS) and Europeans Electronic Health Record Exchange Format (EEHRxF) to develop and support specifications in the context of European Commission co-funded projects.  

 HL7 Europe is partner of different European Projects related to the management of clinical data on Cancer for primary and secondary data reuse. 

Organisation

The following figure shows the current organisational chart of HL7 Europe, showing the connections between the HL7 International Board of Directors, the HL7 Europe Board of Directors, the Technical Coordination Team, and the European Advisory Council.