Acknowledgment
The development of this Implementation Guide version has been supported by the
Xt-EHR Joint Action.
Xt-EHR provided expertise, alignment with European health policy priorities,
and validation of specifications to enable consistency with EHDS requirements.
### Scope
This Implementation Guide (IG) brings together **base** and **core** HL7® FHIR® artifacts designed specifically for the European context.
It provides a foundation for interoperability and reusability across national projects, European initiatives, and derived HL7 Europe guides.
The guide supports:
* Developers and implementers who need common building blocks.
* Policymakers and program leads who require consistent definitions for EHDS-aligned projects.
* Standards experts who wish to build on a harmonized European foundation.
### Introduction
The HL7 Europe Base and Core Implementation Guide provides a **layered approach to FHIR interoperability** in the European context; and it aims to support a coherent and reusable set of FHIR specifications across Europe.
It includes:
* **Base profiles.** Loosely constrained baseline definitions of common European concepts (e.g., Patient, Practitioner). They provide flexibility and serve as the foundation for Core and derived profiles.
* **Core profiles.** More constrained profiles designed for reuse across most European IGs. They introduce essential constraints, can often be used directly, and pursue alignment with IPS.
See the [**Introduction** page](introduction.html) for detailed explanations of Base and Core profiles, their relationship with Extensions and scoped IGs, and their alignment with EHDS and IPS.
