HL7 Australia is a membership-based, not-for-profit public company limited by guarantee working to improve healthcare interoperability in Australia through the development, adoption and effective use of standards that enable health information to be exchanged safely and consistently. Through its affiliation with HL7 International, HL7 Australia and its members can also contribute Australian perspectives and experience to the development and use of HL7 standards internationally.
HL7 Australia is a membership-based, not-for-profit public company limited by guarantee working to improve healthcare interoperability in Australia through the development, adoption and effective use of standards that enable health information to be exchanged safely and consistently. Through its affiliation with HL7 International, HL7 Australia and its members can also contribute Australian perspectives and experience to the development and use of HL7 standards internationally.
Welcome to HL7 Australia
HL7 Australia is Australia’s community for healthcare interoperability standards. We bring together government, healthcare providers, industry, implementers and standards experts to develop, adapt and support standards and specifications that enable health information to be exchanged safely and consistently to support better care.
For more than 25 years, HL7 Australia and its members have contributed to the development and localisation of HL7 standards to meet Australian requirements. Today this includes developing, balloting and publishing Australian specifications and implementation guides based on HL7 International standards including HL7® FHIR®, supporting the adoption and implementation of HL7 standards in Australia, and representing Australian interests within the global HL7 community.
Membership of HL7 Australia provides opportunities to engage in these activities, help shape Australian interoperability standards and be part of many HL7 International activities.
We create and promote the adoption of cutting-edge, consensus-based interoperability standards that enable a digitally enabled, person-centred, inclusive, and data-driven health ecosystem.
By 2029, we aspire:
To be recognised as a critical partner in the digital transformation of the Australian health ecosystem.
For HL7 and HL7 Australia standards to underpin the provision of secure, fit-for-purpose, and connected digital solutions nationwide.
For the Australian healthcare sector to recognise us as the leading health informatics standards development and implementation organisation in Australia.
Australia increasingly depends on health information being able to move safely and consistently between systems, organisations and care settings. Governments, healthcare providers and the health technology sector are increasingly adopting standards-based interoperability based on HL7® FHIR®. HL7 Australia brings together the people and provides the standards development processes and infrastructure to make this possible.
This is reflected in the success of initiatives such as the Sparked program — a collaboration between the Commonwealth Department of Health, Disability and Ageing, the Australian Digital Health Agency, HL7 Australia and CSIRO — which is accelerating the development and implementation of FHIR standards in Australia through broad stakeholder engagement.
The framework for how HL7 Australia responds to this changing environment is set out in our Business and Operating Models and Strategy 2025–2029. Together, these documents describe how HL7 Australia creates and delivers value, how we organise and sustain our activities, and the strategic direction for the organisation.
That direction is reflected in five priorities: developing high-quality Australian interoperability standards and specifications; supporting their adoption and implementation; strengthening the community that develops and uses them; building effective national and international partnerships; and ensuring we have the organisational capability to support this work sustainably into the future.
Our Strategy 2025-2029 identifies the following key result areas crucial to achieving our vision:
Shape the standards agenda and develop, govern and publish high-quality Australian specifications through rigorous, open and consensus-based processes.
Promote and enable the effective adoption and implementation of HL7 standards across Australia.
Engage, support, and grow the community that develops, implements and uses HL7 standards in Australia.
Build strong national and international relationships in which HL7 Australia is a valued, influential partner for advancing standards-based healthcare interoperability.
Strengthen the governance, systems and financial resources needed for HL7 Australia to operate effectively and sustainably.
HL7 Australia hosts at least three FHIR Connectathon events each year. These are ticketed events and are advertised here, on our HL7 Australia Confluence page.
HL7 Australia hosts at least three FHIR Connectathon events each year. These are ticketed events and are advertised here, on our HL7 Australia Confluence page.
If you’re interested in sponsoring a Connectathon, please get in touch with our Events Team here.
Health Level Seven® International (HL7®) is the global authority on standards for interoperability of health technology with members in over 40 countries.
Founded in 1987, Health Level Seven International (HL7®) is a not-for-profit, ANSI-accredited standards developing organisation dedicated to providing a comprehensive framework and related standards for the exchange, integration, sharing and retrieval of electronic health information that supports clinical practice and the management, delivery and evaluation of health services.
In the past two years, through its partnership with the University of Melbourne and CSIRO, and with funding from the Australian Digital Health Agency (ADHA), HL7 Australia has trained in excess of 1,000 individuals in the use of FHIR.
We are proud of this partnership which has developed and delivered a range of courses from introducing FHIR to healthcare leaders and project managers to courses providing software developers with an understanding of FHIR fundamentals and an introduction to SMART on FHIR.
Going forward, expressions of interest for Agency funded FHIR training courses will transfer from HL7 Australia to the ADHA directly. For information on future Agency funded FHIR training please go here.
HL7 standards support clinical practice and the management, delivery, and evaluation of health services, and are recognized as the most commonly used in the world.
I work on healthcare IT standards because it's one of the few things I can do that makes a real difference to the care my family will get — and everyone else's family too. HL7 Australia has always been an open, generous community in service of that, and some of my best professional relationships have come out of it
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It has been a privilege to be part of the development of Health Informatics from its infancy to become a core component of clinical care. HL7 Standards and the HL7 Community have been key enablers of consistent semantic representation for health data and interoperability. This has made possible the provision of the information needed at the point of clinical care decision making to optimise health outcomes.
