A practical FHIR roadmap for 2025: What healthcare IT teams should focus on
FHIR R5 is final. IPS is becoming mandatory in Europe. Here's what your implementation strategy should look like in 2025.
By Erik Moors, Standards Strategy Lead at Interoplab
2024 was a watershed year for FHIR. R5 went final. The International Patient Summary became mandatory in EU digital health policies. National implementations are accelerating across Europe.
For healthcare IT teams, this creates both opportunity and urgency. What should your FHIR roadmap look like heading into 2025?
Where FHIR stands today
FHIR R5 is now the current standard. R4B (the previous release) will continue to be supported, but new implementations should target R5.
The real momentum, though, comes from regulatory requirements:
- EU: IPS (International Patient Summary) is now part of the European Digital Health Infrastructure
- Netherlands: Nictiz’s FHIR-NL profiles are mature and widely adopted
- UK: NHS Digital continues to expand FHIR usage across primary and secondary care
- Scandinavia: Leading the way with large-scale FHIR deployments
This isn’t theoretical anymore. It’s happening now.
Five priorities for 2025
1. IPS compliance
If you’re in Europe, International Patient Summary compliance is no longer optional. Your systems need to be able to:
- Generate an IPS from patient data
- Consume and parse an IPS from another system
- Map your internal data structures to IPS FHIR profiles
Start now. IPS is simpler than full FHIR integration, which makes it a good entry point.
2. Validate your current FHIR implementations
If you implemented FHIR in 2023-2024, validate that implementation now. Many teams built to R4 without realizing R5 changed key elements.
Use automated testing. Conformancelab can help you validate against official profiles in minutes.
3. Plan for national FHIR profiles
Most European countries are developing or refining national FHIR profiles (FHIR-NL, FHIR-SE, FHIR-DE). These are becoming the de facto standard in their regions.
Map your implementation to your country’s profiles. This isn’t extra work — it’s clarifying your existing work.
4. Build for extensibility
FHIR profiles will evolve. Your implementation shouldn’t break when they do.
Design your systems with extension points. Test with real-world profile variations. Don’t hardcode assumptions about the data structure.
5. Invest in standards expertise
This is the most important one: invest in people who understand FHIR, not just tools that implement it.
A tool can validate your FHIR. It can’t decide which profile you should use or how to design your data flows. That requires expertise.
The implementation timeline
Q1 2025: Start IPS validation and compliance work. Audit your current FHIR implementations.
Q2 2025: Complete initial IPS compliance. Begin planning for national profile adoption.
Q3-Q4 2025: Roll out national profile implementations. Conduct large-scale interoperability testing.
Common mistakes to avoid
“We’ll just use the basic FHIR spec.” Don’t. Use the profile that applies in your region or use case. The base spec is intentionally flexible — profiles reduce that flexibility to create consistency.
“FHIR R4 is good enough.” R5 fixes real problems in R4. If you’re starting now, target R5. The cost of migrating later is higher than getting it right initially.
“We’ll validate manually.” Automated testing is non-negotiable. Manual testing scales to a few test cases. Real-world validation requires thousands of scenarios. Use tools.
“Standards expertise is a cost center.” It’s not. Standards expertise prevents expensive rework. It accelerates implementations. It builds confidence with partners.
Looking ahead
2025 will be the year FHIR moves from “emerging standard” to “business as usual” in European healthcare. Teams that start now will lead. Teams that wait will struggle to catch up.
The question isn’t whether to implement FHIR. It’s whether you’ll do it well.
Need help planning your FHIR strategy? Talk with our team →