About the company

Competence in Healthcare IT, worldwide.

Heitmann Consulting and Services provides consulting, development, training and media-related services on information exchange and system integration based on healthcare standards.

The company

Two decades at the heart of healthcare interoperability.

Our projects cover analysis, specification and implementation support, provided so far mainly in the Netherlands and Germany, but also in Austria, Switzerland, Lithuania, Norway and Australia.

Heitmann Consulting and Services works throughout Europe in various integration projects — both preparing specifications, especially for CDA, and supporting the implementation and testing of those implementations into production environments.

Founded in 2004 in the Netherlands and located near Cologne, Germany, for several years, the company now has its headquarters in Beelitz near Berlin.

Founded 2004

Started in the Netherlands, continued in Germany — headquartered in Beelitz near Berlin.

Active across Europe

NL, DE, AT, CH, LT, NO — and beyond, including Australia.

ART-DECOR® at the core

Consistent documentation and support for specification, implementation and testing of CDA-based artefacts.

Representative work

Specification and implementation across national programmes.

Patient Summaries

HL7 CDA templates and terminologies for National and International Patient Summaries.

Screening & reports

Colonoscopy and pathology reports for the Dutch national bowel-cancer screening programme, plus pulmonology reports.

Care management

Chronic disease management, perinatology, discharge letters, laboratory reports and medication prescribe/dispense/lists.

National infrastructures

HL7 CDA templates and terminologies for Austria, Switzerland, Lithuania and Norway.

Emergency & transition care

Document specifications for emergency care and continuity/transition of care.

Tooling & ART-DECOR®

Consistent, comprehensive documentation and support for specification, implementation and testing.

35+ yearsin healthcare IT

The principal

Dr. Kai U. Heitmann

Physician and healthcare IT consultant working across Europe — specialised in health information standards, standardization, terminologies, semantics and ontologies, from HL7 v2, CDA and FHIR to DICOM, SNOMED CT and LOINC.

From 2019 to 2021 he served as Director Interoperability at the health innovation hub (hih) of the German Federal Ministry of Health in Berlin. Today he is a senior expert in European Commission projects and with HL7 Europe, a member of the Federal Ministry of Health's expert circle (since 2022), and a guest lecturer at the Hasso Plattner Institute, University of Potsdam (since 2018/19).

In projects he deals with all major phases — concept, specification and implementation. He is co-founder of the ART-DECOR® tool suite and the ART-DECOR Expert Group, and founder of ART-DECOR Open Tools. Involved in HL7 since the 1990s, he served as International Director on the Board of HL7 International (2004–2008), is Executive Director of HL7 Germany, and acts as an ISO and DIN delegate. He has advised Nictiz (Netherlands, until 2018), ELGA (Austria), eHealth Suisse and the German health-IT association bvitg, and increasingly applies AI platforms within European Commission projects.

HL7 v2 · CDA · FHIR
DICOM
SNOMED CT · LOINC
German — native
Dutch — C2
English — C2

Credentials

Memberships, activities & standards leadership.

Leadership & roles

Director Interoperability, health innovation hub (hih), German Federal Ministry of Health (2019–2021)
Senior Expert, European Commission projects & HL7 Europe · HL7 Europe Community Event Manager
Member, expert circle of the Federal Ministry of Health (since 2022)
Executive Director (CEO), HL7 Germany — 2015–2019 and since 2022
Director International Affiliates, HL7 International Board (2004–2008)
Co-founder, ART-DECOR® tool suite & founder, ART-DECOR Open Tools · Founder, HL7.tv

Standards authorship

Author, ISO 13582 — Sharing of OID registry information
Author, HL7 Templates Standard (Release 1; normative since 2018)
Author, ANSI/HL7 V2 XML Encoding Syntax, Release 1
Co-author, HL7 Version 3 XML ITS
Member & past board member, German Society for Medical Informatics (GMDS)

Committees & standardization

DIN member & delegate to HL7 International and ISO (since 2011)
Contributor, ISO TC 215 Medical Informatics
Member, HL7 Germany & its Technical Committees (since 1995)
Co-chair, HL7 Templates Work Group (2012–2019)
Guest lecturer, Hasso Plattner Institute, University of Potsdam (since 2018/19)
Int'l Scientific Advisory Board, Miracum-Difuture (Medical Informatics Initiative)

Honors, awards & academia

Fellowship, HL7 International
Ed Hammond Volunteer of the Year Award, HL7 International
Reviewer: JMIR Medical Informatics, MIE, EFMI and GMDS
Author/co-author of ~50 scientific papers and 5 books

Career

Past & present employments.

2007 →

Owner, Heitmann Consulting and Services e. K. (Germany)

Independent healthcare IT consultancy · September 2007 – present

Current

2016 →

CEO, ART-DECOR Open Tools GmbH

Open tooling for standards-based specification & testing · since May 2016

Current

2015 →

CEO, HL7 Germany

January 2015 – May 2019 and since January 2022

Current

2023

Member, InteropCouncil for digital health in Germany

German Federal Ministry of Health, Berlin · July – December 2023

Past

2019–21

Director Interoperability, health innovation hub (hih)

German Federal Ministry of Health, Berlin · May 2019 – December 2021

Past

2016–19

CEO, Gefyra GmbH

HL7 FHIR consulting, training, development and projects · July 2016 – September 2019

Past

2004–08

Owner, Heitmann Consulting and Services (The Netherlands)

January 2004 – December 2008

Past

1989–08

University of Cologne — Institute for Medical Statistics, Informatics and Epidemiology

Assistant Professor, Deputy Head of Medical Informatics · 1989–2004 (full time), 2004–2008 (part time)

Past

1993

Dr. med. — University of Cologne (summa cum laude)

Doctoral thesis on the computer-assisted measurement and reconstruction of brain surfaces (gyrification of the human cerebral cortex)

Education

1982–88

Medicine & Medical Informatics — University of Cologne

Studies in medicine; state examination and medical licence (Approbation) in 1988

Education

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