Simplifier Data Modeling Launch
The ideal way to kickstart your organization’s FHIR journey
- Collaborate on FHIR data models
- Publish publicly or in-company
- Advanced visual editors
Without a solid foundation, things quickly fall apart.
Many organizations start enthusiastically with FHIR but soon get stuck due to fragmented workflows, lack of clear agreements, and poorly structured implementation guides. The Data Modeling Launch prevents this—by bringing structure, tooling and collaboration from day one.
The Simplifier Data Modeling Launch is the ideal way to kickstart your organization’s FHIR journey. This program focuses on establishing the right processes and tools within your environment to ensure a seamless start to FHIR profiling and implementation guide authoring.
Who is this program for?
This program is designed for anyone responsible for setting up FHIR specifications—from data architects to functional designers. It’s especially valuable for organizations that are just getting started with FHIR and need structure, tooling, and clear agreements.
Kickstart your journey
How it works
A Firely data modeling consultant will guide your team through the setup process and ensure you have a solid foundation to build your FHIR models upon.
The Data Modelling Launch consists of 3 online workshops with your team over a period of 3 weeks. One meeting per week allows for enough time for the participants to work on the action items after the meeting.
Simplifier Data Modeling Sprint
What you’ll walk away with after three sessions:
- Clear collaboration agreements (sync strategies, versioning, naming conventions)
- A visually consistent and dynamic Implementation Guide
- Integrated validation and QA setup (local + CI/CD)
- Tangible progress and long-term value from your Simplifier environment
“By the end, you’ll have a robust, reusable project with clear workflows, consistent styling and automated validation”
– Ardon Toonstra – Senior Consultant
While the program focuses on preparing your organization and environment for FHIR profiling, we also offer a data modeling training course and consultancy services to dive deeper into the art of profiling itself.
Simplifier Data Modeling Launch Deliverables
Profiling Guidelines
A comprehensive internal guide that establishes a shared foundation for data modeling across your organization. This document captures the key design principles, modeling agreements, and architectural decisions that shape your FHIR profiles. It includes:
- Standardized naming conventions for profiles, extensions and elements
- Guidelines for linking profiles to functional specifications and logical models
- A clear versioning and release strategy for structured lifecycle management
- An architectural decision log to document rationale and promote transparency
Authoring Workflow
A practical framework to help your team confidently build, manage and publish FHIR Implementation Guides. This deliverable provides hands-on guidance for setting up an efficient authoring environment and includes:
- Step-by-step setup of organization, team and project structures in Simplifier.net, with emphasis on naming conventions, URL keys and metadata
- A defined synchronization strategy between Simplifier, local environments and version control systems (e.g., Git)
- Clear recommendations for authoring tools and languages (e.g., FSH, JSON/XML)
- Instructions for publishing and sharing specifications with various audiences—internally, publicly or via controlled access (e.g., guest users, marketplace, exports)
- Guidance on example generation to improve usability and understanding of your profiles
Automated Quality Assurance (QA)
A robust validation framework to ensure consistent, high-quality output throughout your FHIR modeling process. This deliverable includes:
- Custom validation rules designed to enforce your internal profiling guidelines where applicable
- A complete QA workflow for FHIR validation at every level—within Simplifier.net, on individual machines and in CI/CD pipelines (e.g., GitHub Actions)
- Practical tips for exposing validation results to stakeholders, including external users and implementation partners
Implementation Guide Template
A visually appealing, consistent and effective foundation for building your FHIR Implementation Guide—regardless of the use case. This includes:
- Brand-aligned design: A flexible starting point that allows you to align your Implementation Guide with your organization’s brand identity, while maintaining consistency with widely recognized FHIR guide conventions.
- Essential content structure: A curated set of key pages every Implementation Guide should contain, along with clear guidance on how to keep them consistent, dynamic and easy to maintain. This includes the use of text-based diagrams (via PlantUML), reusable page templates, and FQL-based content generation—fully documented in the accompanying resources.
Feedback collection
A structured process for gathering and managing stakeholder input to continuously improve your FHIR Implementation Guides. This ensures your specifications are not only technically sound, but also practical, usable, and aligned with real-world needs. The deliverable includes:
- A proven set of tools and workflows for collecting feedback, tracking issues and managing change requests throughout the development lifecycle
- Guidelines for implementing formal feedback processes, such as internal reviews, external consultations and structured balloting rounds
Simplifier Data Modeling Framework
How you will receive it
All deliverables will be developed in close collaboration with your team and delivered through a dedicated Simplifier.net project. This project environment will include:
- A ready-to-use Implementation Guide template that:
- Can be copied into any of your organization’s projects to quickly launch new guides with consistent styling and best-practice page structures
- Includes your finalized profiling guidelines, agreed workflows, feedback processes and other essential documentation
- The most recent version of your team’s automated QA rules, along with example data to validate them
- A Kanban board to track the development and progress of all related deliverables and tasks
- Full access for your team, both during and after the engagement, to continue building and maintaining your project independently
Align with the HL7 FHIR Community Process (FCP)
In addition to setting up your Implementation Guide for internal use and external clarity, the Launch also helps you prepare for HL7 FHIR Compliance Pathway (FCP) alignment. We translate key FCP requirements into a practical, repeatable workflow.
- Centralized issue management with a transparent audit trail to support traceability and governance
- HL7-aligned Implementation Guide templates, based on best practices used in formal HL7 guides
- IG Publisher validation, helping your team target zero-error publication from the start
This ensures that your project isn’t just technically sound—but also aligned with expectations from formal standards organizations like HL7 or IHE.
No data modeling expertise or capacity available?
Since the Data Modeling Launch doesn’t cover the actual design of your FHIR data models, our expert consultants are here to help. With deep experience across projects and tech stacks, we can support you at any stage—whether you’re just getting started or scaling a mature FHIR solution.
Furthermore, our FHIR data modeling training course provides an in-depth discussion of the conformance mechanism offered by FHIR, including:
- How to design and create FHIR Profiles
- How FHIR Profiles serve a similar purpose to implementation guides, templates, archetypes and detailed clinical models associated with other interoperability standards,
- How to document the adaptation of the generic FHIR model to a particular context of use
- A series of hands-on exercises allowing the attendee to get an in-depth understanding of the material
Simplifier Data Modeling Launch
Book a call today and get your FHIR modeling environment up and running within 3 weeks – tailored to your organization.
Special offer available for paid plan customers.
FAQ – Data Modeling Launch
Not necessarily. While some understanding of FHIR is helpful, we often work with teams that are new to conformance resources like StructureDefinitions or ValueSets. One goal of the Launch is to help you avoid mistakes and inefficiencies common in early-stage FHIR projects.
We’ll ask for some basic information about your team, intended use case(s) and any early modeling work you’ve done. Don’t worry—we’ll guide you through it all during the intake. No polished profiles needed, just your ambition to get started the right way.
You’ll walk away with a fully functioning modeling environment, including:
– Clear profiling guidelines and naming/versioning conventions
– All of this is delivered inside a Simplifier.net project that your team controls.
– A branded Implementation Guide with consistent structure and navigation
– A validation and QA setup for Simplifier, local tools and CI/CD
– A feedback collection workflow, synced with your IG
No. The Launch is about setting up your modeling infrastructure—not creating specific profiles for your use case. If you need help designing your data model, we offer separate Standalone FHIR consulting and a FHIR Profiling Course for that.
We work within the Simplifier.net ecosystem and follow HL7 FHIR best practices. The Launch includes support for FQL (FHIR Query Language), PlantUML, SUSHI-compatible workflows and integration with Git-based pipelines.
Yes. The branded IG template, profiling guidelines, QA rules and authoring workflows are designed to be copied across multiple Simplifier projects. This gives you a repeatable process for future initiatives.
The full program takes 3 weeks, with 3 online workshops and intermediate work by your team. We adapt the pace to your availability, but most teams are fully set up after three sessions.
You’ll have a professionally structured Simplifier project, a working Implementation Guide in your organization’s style, active QA validation and clear modeling agreements. In short: a rock-solid foundation for long-term success.
Absolutely. We’ll leave you with full ownership of your project and documentation for onboarding new team members. Many teams also use the Launch as a first step and continue with our consultancy or training to support modeling work.
Yes. As part of the Launch, we provide a working Implementation Guide template and offer access to example projects in Simplifier. This helps you compare, learn, and build faster.
Definitely. The Launch includes a feedback workflow setup and user access management in Simplifier, so you can gather input from reviewers, guests or domain experts in a structured way.
Yes. One of the goals of the Data Modeling Launch is to align your workflow with the expectations of formal standards bodies like HL7. While we don’t submit artifacts to the FHIR Community Process (FCP) for you, we help you put the required structures in place.
Assistance beyond Firely Data Modeling Launch
If you need assistance beyond the Firely Data Modeling Launch Program we offer services where we augment your team with seasoned consultants.