HL7 Norge
FHIR Implementation Guide for the Norwegian Municipal Sector
Shared starting point for understanding and consistent use of FHIR in municipal health and care services.
Norwegian

FHIR Implementation Guide for the Norwegian Municipal Sector
0.3.0 - Norway flag

FHIR Implementation Guide for the Norwegian Municipal Sector - Local Development build (v0.3.0) built by the FHIR (HL7® FHIR® Standard) Build Tools. See the Directory of published versions

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Official URL: https://kommune.conteir.no/ImplementationGuide/hl7.fhir.no.kommune Version: 0.3.0
Draft as of 2026-10-02 Computable Name: FHIR_Kommune_IG

Status: 0.3.0 – draft for review and implementation. See maturity and prerequisites for production use.

Purpose

This implementation guide provides a shared and practical starting point for using HL7 FHIR R4 in Norwegian municipal health and care services. The goal is to support shared understanding, consistent terminology and practical interoperability across municipalities, vendors and national actors.

Municipal services need shared concepts and agreed ways of exchanging data. The European Health Data Space (EHDS) provides a European framework for further standardization, with phased implementation and a separate EEA process. This guide provides a practical starting point for municipal interoperability. See EHDS for more information.

This guide is intended to complement existing Norwegian FHIR work, not compete with it. no-basis is the national base layer, Welfare Technology Hub (Velferdsteknologisk knutepunkt, VKP) supports data flows between welfare technology and EHRs, Patient's measurement data (Pasientens måledata, PMD) covers measurement sharing, and Oslo municipality's Patient Journal API is an important Norwegian reference.

Practical Starting Point

A first implementation SHOULD start with a limited and useful minimum: patient, active municipal follow-up, concrete contacts or stays, a plan and relevant supporting documents. This typically means Patient, EpisodeOfCare, Encounter, CarePlan, DocumentReference and ServiceRequest.

The guide therefore focuses on:

  • good use cases that explain why data is shared
  • clear use of Encounter for a concrete contact, supervision, meeting or stay
  • clear use of EpisodeOfCare for municipal follow-up over time
  • a broad, careful CarePlan for goals, interventions and further follow-up
  • standard FHIR REST/search, Bundle and OperationOutcome

Writing data back from external systems, local worklists and full case handling are not part of the minimum in this version. Such needs should be described as separate use cases before they become requirements.

What The Guide Provides

Area Value
Use cases Shows the municipal interoperability situations this guide is based on.
Mapping Helps municipalities and vendors translate familiar municipal concepts into FHIR resources.
Municipal profiles Provides a shared minimum for episodes, plans and actual contacts without modelling the full municipal EHR.
Norwegian Context Practical KPR KTT terminology guidance, national profiles, services and identifiers.
API principles Describes a pragmatic start with search, read and documentation in CapabilityStatement.

Audience

This guide is intended for:

  • municipalities and inter-municipal collaborations
  • vendors of municipal EHR systems, professional systems and integration platforms
  • national actors and service platforms
  • specialist health services where interoperability requires shared FHIR use

Scope

Included

  • A shared starting point for municipal FHIR use.
  • Shared concepts and simple patterns for municipal services.
  • A starting point for using key FHIR resources.
  • Use cases, mapping and relation to no-basis.

Not included now

  • A complete profile catalog and detailed technical requirements.
  • New national code systems.
  • A complete testing and certification regime.

This guide is a first step and will be extended iteratively.

How To Read This Guide

Recommended first reading order:

  1. Start with Use cases to understand which municipal interoperability needs the guide is based on.
  2. Then go to Modelling and profiling to see how the needs are represented in FHIR.
  3. Use Mapping when you need to translate municipal concepts into FHIR resources.
  4. Then see FHIR Profiles to find the profiles and examples included in this version.

Use the following pages when needed:

The examples in the IG are published together with the profiles on FHIR Profiles.

Normative vs Guidance

  • Statements using SHALL, SHOULD or MAY are normative.
  • Examples, explanations and scenarios are guidance unless they use normative requirement words.
  • If there is doubt, the priority described in Conformance applies.

Relation To no-basis

Where no-basis profiles exist, they are the national starting point. See Norwegian Context.