New schema release: The SPHN journey continues
The SPHN Semantic Interoperability Framework’s 2026.1 release improves consistency across the SPHN Schema and provides further alignments to data reality in the Swiss health-data landscape, with a focus on microbiology, drug prescriptions, and nutrition-related aspects.
10.02.2026
What is the SPHN Semantic Interoperability Framework?
The SPHN Semantic Interoperability Framework represents a structure for health data for research using common standards, guidelines, and tools. It helps to gather health data for research in accordance with the FAIR principles, i.e., data being Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable. At its core, the framework builds on internationally recognized semantic standards to clearly define the meaning of shareable health data.
What is new in the latest release version?
The now released version 2026.1 further aligns the framework to real-world data of Swiss hospitals, with the main updates related to microbiology, drug prescription, and nutrition.
This milestone is the result of collaborative efforts of the SPHN FAIR data specialists, the Semantics Working Group, the RDF Working Group members from the university hospitals, and the BioMedIT workforce.
Resources related to the 2026.1 release:
- Concepts and Schemas: SPHN Dataset and SPHN RDF Schema
- Visual exploration:
- On schema-level (SPHN Schema Scope)
- On concept-level (pyLODE)
- Documentation: SPHN Semantic Interoperability Framework
- External terminologies: on BioMedIT Portal
- Data validation: Quality assurance framework (SHACL and SPARQL)