Understanding the changing technology landscape is a priority for healthcare organizations and professionals. Events like the ICT&health World Conference present a unique opportunity for this. USoft joined the 2025 ICT&health World Conference in Maastricht to share our perspective, alongside a range of other visionaries, technology experts, and healthcare professionals.

It is clear that the healthcare sector is ready for transformative change – and the combination of low-code and openEHR can help make that happen. In this blog, we share the key findings from this event and describe how healthcare organizations can gain the benefits of increased data accessibility and rapid innovation.

Healthcare has advanced a lot in the last century. Globally, life expectancy has risen from 51 years in 1960 to about 73 years today. In developed countries like the US and the Netherlands it is even higher, at approximately 85 years.

Technology plays a vital role in the healthcare sector’s successes – past and present. In addition to discovering new treatments, technology is also the key to successful prevention and consistent care in a digital age.

We’re on the cusp of a revolution in healthcare digitization thanks to open standards like openEHR and proven technologies like low-code. These are making it possible for healthcare providers to implement reliable and adaptable platforms, faster and with greater access to data and the required functionality to fully support their organizational processes.

In brief: what is openEHR?

OpenEHR is an open standard for lifelong, patient-centered Electronic Health Records (EHRs).

While standards like HL7 FHIR define the way data is shared between systems, openEHR focuses on standardizing data storage across diverse settings. Both standards can be combined to provide cross-platform interoperability.

OpenEHR gives domain specialists and clinicians the ability to define data models, semantics, and content. Using these specifications, each organization can also precisely determine how data is used by external systems and other organizations.

Crucially, openEHR allows patient data to remain independently agile, without being tied to specific processes, technologies, or systems. It also allows different ‘slices’ of data to serve a variety of purposes, such as anonymized data for research or care-specific data for each patient.

A simple example. I recently had to visit my doctor and she requested an allergy screening, with a negative outcome. So, I was referred to a specialist in a nearby hospital (1.5km away). And again, another (identical) allergy screening was requested, because they didn’t have access to my results and, understandably, needed to have these in ‘their’ record.

This is just one of the many examples in which openEHR adoption can make a major difference in making healthcare (much) more cost efficient, more patient-centric and faster.

Wider adoption of openEHR is enabling better care across EU

Data is vital for good patient care and for informing preventative approaches. The need for better data access is driving an acceleration in adoption of the openEHR standard.

Examples include specialist healthcare organizations like Maarsingh & van Steijn, which used low-code to develop its own openEHR-based solutions. These leverage clinical data to give a regional overview that enables better preventative mental healthcare.

Software vendors are realizing the importance of liberating clinical data too. For example, CODE24, a Netherlands-based provider, was one of the first to embrace openEHR to create a portfolio of solutions for the Healthcare industry that currently serve millions of users. Similarly, Vitagroup, a Germany-based openEHR provider, provides an openEHR data platform that serves the region of Catalonia, Spain, as well as many hospitals in Germany.

As revealed at the 2025 ICT&health World Conference, larger hospitals are now starting to realize that adopting openEHR-based systems can give them greater interoperability. These include Karolinska University Hospital, University Hospital Basel, and University Hospital Zurich.

Furthermore, countries like Slovenia and Greece are implementing openEHR-based systems nationwide. The growth of securely shared data will greatly benefit patients and healthcare professionals across Europe by enabling platform-agnostic, data-led care.

Separating data from technology opens new possibilities in healthcare

Traditional Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems are a ‘closed box’ that keep patient data tied to a specific system and the functionalities within it. Getting access to this data from outside the system can be very challenging, and this limits how data can be used.

Many organizations find that traditional, off-the-shelf EHR systems lack certain functionalities and often include capabilities that are not relevant to the specific organization. But they’re stuck paying for the whole package, regardless. In addition, such traditional systems are costly to implement and remain rigid to change and innovation throughout most of the lifecycle.

By separating the data layer from the functionality, openEHR makes it possible to use patient data in new ways, including collaborative partnerships and emerging technologies like AI. It also provides the possibility to rapidly build new functionalities around existing systems and scale, especially when low-code is used – and this gives an instant uplift in value.

OpenEHR opens a new frontier in preventative medicine

Closed EHR systems lack the flexibility to collect and store new types of data. This makes it hard to gather new information such as lifestyle data, which is very significant for preventative healthcare. 

With openEHR, the patients themselves can play an active role in maintaining accurate health records. Data can be collected from new sources (such as online surveys) and used for patient-specific care.

Alternatively, selected data can be made available for statistical analysis on the federated level. The potential for analysing large datasets of anonymized patient data for preventative care and research is immense, and openEHR makes it much easier.

How low-code drives innovation and better outcomes in healthcare

Better functionality: By using low-code technology, healthcare organizations can rapidly build new software capabilities that better match their needs. The process is more collaborative, and it enables domain specialists to work alongside IT experts to define and improve software functionality.

Speed: Low-code is a lot faster than traditional high-coding, because 90% of the repetitive work is automated. In fact, we did a proof-of-value test case, in collaboration with CODE24, to see just how quickly we could build a new application – in this case for vital value analysis.

From start to finish, the whole project took 25 hours, including the integration with the openEHR CDR. Using a pre-built integration with all the archetypes and templates embedded (this is something we can provide), then it would take just 5 hours to build. Compared to the typical implementation of new custom-made healthcare software, which takes many months or even years, low-code enables you to deliver new functionality within weeks.

Scalable and adaptable: Low-code can be highly scalable, and it allows you to make iterative changes as needed. An application built for one organization can be shared and used by other organizations within the same group, and they can easily adapt it if needed.

Cost advantage: From a financial perspective, low-code can help to free up considerable resources. The total cost of ownership (TCO) is at least 30% lower than a high-coded project, while some USoft customers have seen a decrease of 70% in their TCO.

What kind of functionality can be built with low-code?

Platform selection is a defining factor, because there are about 600 different low-code vendors currently on the market – each with their own area of excellence. Most platforms focus on simple applications that are on the periphery of your IT systems, and are targeted towards citizen developers with limited functionality requirements.

USoft stands out from the crowd because it has a solid focus on highly complex use cases, including core systems. With the USoft platform, organizations can use low-code to build comprehensive solutions that encompass administrative systems, EHR systems, and other business-critical processes.

The proof lies in our customer track record, where a broad set of customers has relied on USft for business critical solutions for over 20 to even 30 years. It’s important to realize that you don’t need to replace your entire system, because low-code can be used to build new functionality around existing systems.

Our view is that there’s no ‘silver bullet’ when it comes to technology; you should seek out the best platform for each use-case. A significant advantage of combining openEHR and low-code is that the data remains independent of the technology – so you have a lot of choice over which platform to use for each functionality and level of complexity.

Key factors in successful implementation of openEHR

There are several factors involved in implementing new openEHR solutions built with low-code. According to Bouwe Koopal, CIO at Maarsingh & van Steijn, these are:

Organizational change: Change management is better tackled early-on, before implementation. This makes it easier to include feedback in the build process, and make iterative improvements.

Data quality: Poor quality data can cause problems down the road, especially during data conversion.

Platform selection: By separating data from technology, you gain more choice over which platform is best for each functionality or use case. Selecting a low-code platform that already focuses on your domain is important for narrowing your choices. Then, look for a platform that uses industry-standard code (instead of its own version) as this makes it easier to move forward in the future, and ensures the longevity of your solution.

Unlocking innovation with openEHR and low-code

Collaboration and innovation can help healthcare organizations deliver more efficient care, but data must be able to flow to where it’s needed. Closed proprietary systems are frequently a roadblock for this, and may also fail to offer the functionality required.

By combining low-code with open standards like openEHR, it becomes possible to rapidly build the required functionality and use patient data in numerous ways. These can include AI-powered analysis of clinical and epidemiological data, the federation of data sources across organizations, and portable patient information across multiple platforms.

With low-code, it isn’t necessary to replace existing systems – and this means that organizations can gain all the benefits without losing anything they already have.