Interoperability is more than just technology

This Special Issue of the European Journal for Biomedical Informatics is dedicated to the International HL7 Interoper- ability Conference (IHIC 2016) "Interoperability is more than just technology", 13-15 June 2016 in Genoa, Italy [1]. It con- tains papers selected by an independent peer review process, strictly performed by experts from countries dierent from the authors' country of residence. IHIC 2016 is the 16th event of the International HL7 In- teroperability Conference series, which has been inaugurated in 2000 by the Board of HL7 Germany and its unforget- table Chair and interoperability pioneer Joachim W. Dudeck. The rst event in Dresden, Germany, was entitled "Advanced Healthcare Information Standards". While the rst confer- ences have been characterized by focusing on CDA (Clinical Document Architecture), over the time, the scope of the conferences has been extended towards all aspects of health information interoperability. The concept of interoperability has dramatically changed from standardized electronic data interchange (EDI) based on data representation at applica- tion level, the 7th level of the ISO Open Systems Intercon- nection stack, having been the name giver for the Health Level 7 standards framework. Meanwhile, the semantics of shared data as well as service level interoperability are consid- ered, bringing terminology and ontology issues, but also im- plementation challenges such as Web services and RESTful technologies on board. As visible outcome of such develop- ment, requirements for National Interoperability Frameworks stated in the USA [2], but also hypes such as FHIR came up and are highlighted in the IHIC 2016 papers as well. So it is just consequent to address in 2016 also non-technological issues of interoperability.