Latin America Accelerates Health Data Interoperability With openEHR: A Regional Model for Global Digital Health Transformation

BARCELONA, Spain, October 13, 2025 (Newswire.com) - A new Black Book Research flash survey of 337 health IT executives and clinical leaders across Latin America finds that hospitals in Brazil, Colombia, Chile, and Mexico are rapidly embracing openEHR as the backbone of national health record systems and cross-border data exchange.

The report's release aligns with EHR Con 2025 in Barcelona October 16 & 17, where Black Book Research will present new insights on the growth trajectory of interoperability and data connectivity initiatives across Central and South America.

"openEHR is becoming the operating system for health data across Central and South America," said Doug Brown, President of Black Book Research. "Unlike the incremental interoperability efforts still dominant in North America, tied to legacy EHR frameworks and outdated middleware, Latin American health systems are architecting data platforms built for analytics, scalability, and cross-border care. It's not just faster progress; it's a generational shift in how health information is engineered."

The findings reveal a growing paradox: while Latin American providers, often operating under tighter budgets, are advancing interoperability through open standards, U.S. hospitals remain constrained by proprietary electronic health record ecosystems and slow-moving TEFCA (Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement) implementations.

Survey Highlights

71% of Brazilian hospitals surveyed report active openEHR deployments or advanced planning, with Brazil's Ministry of Health endorsing it as the national standard.

43% of hospitals in Mexico and Chile are piloting openEHR platforms tied to national health record initiatives.

68% of Latin American CIOs rank interoperability as their top health IT investment priority through 2027-outpacing AI, cybersecurity, and EHR replacement.

55% cited vendor lock-in as the primary reason for pursuing openEHR, compared to just 26% of U.S. respondents.

In the U.S., 72% of surveyed providers reported TEFCA participation remains in "pilot or planning stages," and barely 8% are experimenting with openEHR frameworks.

What openEHR Is-and Why It Matters

openEHR is not a single product but a platform standard for building lifelong, computable health records. It defines:

• A Reference Model (how health data is structured, stored, and versioned) and

• Clinician-authored archetypes and templates (capturing the clinical meaning of data)

Together, these enable hospitals to build vendor-neutral Clinical Data Repositories (CDRs), foster modular app innovation, and maintain semantic consistency across decades, languages, and national health systems. Data captured in openEHR can power everything from daily care to analytics and AI-driven predictive models.

How openEHR Differs from the U.S. FHIR Approach

The U.S. model centers on FHIR APIs, mandated by the 21st Century Cures Act and governed by USCDI and TEFCA frameworks. FHIR focuses on data exchange, that is how systems communicate.

openEHR focuses on data persistence and meaning, in comparison, it is how information is stored, governed, and made computable for reuse.

Many global leaders are now combining both: using openEHR as the core data repository for clinical truth and FHIR as the exchange layer for apps, patients, and networks. This dual architecture underpins national strategies in Norway, Catalonia, and Slovenia.

Why Latin America Is Moving Fast

• Policy alignment: Ministries of Health in Brazil and Chile have formally embedded openEHR into their national digital health blueprints.

• Cross-border care: With millions of patients moving across borders annually, true interoperability is a survival necessity.

• Economic urgency: Chronic diseases are projected to cost South America $7.3 trillion by 2050 spurring investment in vendor-neutral, liquid data infrastructures to enable prevention, efficiency, and population health management.

Global Signals of Growth

Europe: Norway and Slovenia already operate national-scale openEHR implementations; Catalonia's medication management system spans more than 60 hospitals.

Policy drivers: The European Health Data Space (EHDS), enacted in 2025, reinforces high-quality, portable health data, fertile ground for openEHR.

Industry validation: Tech giants including Microsoft and major EHR vendors have joined openEHR International, reflecting the standard's accelerating global relevance.

"This is not just a Latin American story," Brown added. "It's a global signal. If the US and Canada do not accelerate beyond EHR vendor-controlled interoperability, it risks being leapfrogged by systems once considered far behind."

About Black Book Research

Black Book Research™ has been the healthcare industry's trusted source for independent technology and services user experience research since 2005, conducting impartial satisfaction surveys, adoption trend analyses, and performance benchmarking across health IT vendors and systems worldwide.

With an expanding footprint across Latin America, Black Book has produced extensive cross-country and regional studies on digital health transformation, interoperability, and vendor performance in Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Panama, and Costa Rica helping policy leaders, CIOs, and investors understand the dynamics of emerging healthcare technology markets. As part of its commitment to open data standards and transparency, Black Book has released its Global openEHR Industry Growth Report, available for free download at www.blackbookmarketresearch.com

Source: Black Book Research