HiX is the electronic health record and hospital information system built by ChipSoft, a Dutch vendor. In early 2026, 76% of hospitals in the Netherlands ran it. You integrate with HiX through HL7 v2 messages, through FHIR APIs on ChipSoft's Zorgplatform, or through standard interfaces such as EDIFACT and DICOM, and always at the request of the care provider.
If you're connecting an application to HiX, you'll deal with three parties: the hospital, ChipSoft, and your own developers. This article covers what HiX is, which interfaces ChipSoft documents itself, who grants access, how testing works, and the mistakes we see most often in these integrations.
What is HiX: vendor, users, and components
ChipSoft started in 1986, when Amsterdam surgeon Gerrit Mulder and his son Hans wrote software to take administrative work off medical specialists. The name HiX stands for Healthcare Information eXchange. ChipSoft employs more than 1,000 people across Amsterdam, Heerenveen, and Hoogeveen in the Netherlands and Antwerp in Belgium.
HiX leads the Dutch hospital market. The early 2026 inventory by consultancy M&I/Partners found that 76% of hospitals are ChipSoft customers, against 16% for Epic. NEXUS fell to 8%, and SAP/Cerner has left the Dutch hospital market. Outside hospitals, versions of HiX run in independent treatment centers, general practices, rehabilitation, elderly and home care, pharmacies, and mental health care.
HiX is a single system with components for the whole organization. These matter most when you plan an integration:
- The EHR and hospital information system. Records, workflow, care pathways, decision support, registration, and billing in one flow.
- Standard content. Forms and processes configured in advance by ChipSoft. In early 2026, 86% of ChipSoft hospitals used standard content, up from 74% in 2024.
- Specialist modules. These include the pharmacy information system and patient data management for intensive care and the operating room.
- HiX Mobile and patient portals. Apps for clinicians and portals where patients view their records.
- Zorgplatform. ChipSoft's service for data exchange with other providers, apps, and personal health environments.
ChipSoft is also adding AI features to HiX, which we cover in a separate article.
Integrating with HiX through HL7 v2 messages
Inside the hospital, most integrations still run on HL7 version 2. Nictiz, the Dutch competence center for health data standards, puts it this way:
"De HL7 v2 berichten zijn vanouds het werkpaard van HL7." (Nictiz)
In English: HL7 v2 messages have always been the workhorse of HL7. Nictiz adds that Dutch hospitals use them mainly for administration and order communication. ChipSoft's list of available HiX interfaces shows which message types HiX supports:
- ADT for patient and admission data, inbound and outbound.
- ORM and OML for orders to the lab, pathology, and diagnostic departments.
- ORU and OUL for results, reports, and vital signs.
- SIU for appointments and appointment status.
- MDM for consultation reports.
- DFT for billable procedures.
- MFN for master data, such as physician details.
Many lines on that list read like "HL7 ORU interface with
HL7 FHIR and Zorgplatform
HL7 FHIR is the newer standard, built on web technology such as REST, JSON, and HTTP. Many new Dutch information standards use it. For apps and external services, FHIR access to HiX runs through Zorgplatform.
The Zorgplatform developer portal describes FHIR APIs for workflow, documents, administration, home monitoring, and the Dutch patient summary dataset (Basisgegevensset Zorg). A notification API is in development. The FHIR specifications list resources including Task, Patient, Practitioner, Organization, Coverage, DocumentReference, Binary, Flag, and AllergyIntolerance, several of them on Dutch national profiles.
Zorgplatform applies a fixed set of rules. An app only gets access when:
- the care provider has added the app to its own "in-house store"
- a valid prescription of the app exists for that patient
- the app holds the permissions requested during integration
- the patient has given explicit consent, for the data services that require it
- the call carries a valid Zorgplatform token.
For authentication, Zorgplatform runs a Security Token Service that issues SAML 2.0 and XUA tokens. There are tokens on behalf of a logged in clinician, tokens for the app itself in automated processes, and tokens for single sign-on. With single sign-on, a clinician opens your web application from HiX, is logged in straight away, and finds the right patient already selected.
Other interfaces and standard integrations
HL7 v2 and FHIR are the best known routes, and ChipSoft presents its list as examples only. These interfaces appear on it too:
| Interface | Used for | Examples from ChipSoft's list |
|---|---|---|
| HL7 CDA | Documents in the acute care chain | Urgent referral from out of hours GP service to the emergency department, ambulance trip form |
| EDIFACT | Messages between care organizations | MEDLAB, MEDRAD, MEDSPE, MEDOVZ |
| DICOM | Images and worklists | Store, Query/Retrieve, Worklist |
| SOAP and XML | Master data and consumption | Operating room items with AFAS, sterilization data from autoclaves |
| Dutch national services | Medication, insurance claims, identification | National switch point (LSP), Vecozo, citizen service number checks |
| Medical devices | Bedside measurements | Patient data management, fetal monitoring, dialysis, infusion, ophthalmology |
Through Zorgplatform, HiX also exchanges data with other clinical systems using IHE profiles, and with personal health environments under MedMij, the Dutch framework for patient data access. Check whether a standard integration exists before you commission new work. An existing interface saves you development time and saves the hospital maintenance.
Who grants access and how testing works
The care provider decides. The developer portal says so directly: ChipSoft connects applications at the request of the care provider, and that provider agrees the details with the supplier and with ChipSoft. Everything beyond the development connection is handled as a project, commissioned from ChipSoft by a care provider.
A request describes your app's use cases and its permissions per situation: what the app may do with a clinician logged in, with a patient logged in, and with nobody logged in. You also state whether you use single sign-on to embed your app visually in HiX.
Zorgplatform has 4 connection stages, which you go through in this order:
- Development connection for the first build phase, through a developer portal account that ChipSoft has to approve.
- Test connection for testing in HiX without a customer, on the Zorgplatform test cluster.
- Acceptance connection for testing by the care provider on its own HiX acceptance environment.
- Production connection for live use.
For the development connection you supply certificates, endpoints, and an HL7 OID. Testing uses a fixed set of test patients from ChipSoft, with Dutch citizen service numbers (BSNs) that VZVZ issues for testing. To go live, the care provider signs an agreement with the app supplier and instructs ChipSoft to add the app to its in-house store. ChipSoft ships published apps as standard content, so every provider gets the same setup.
What a HiX integration asks of security and operations
Security in a HiX integration is mostly a build requirement with an operational side. Put these items in the plan from the first sprint:
- Certificate management. Zorgplatform requires separate certificates per connection and per purpose: client authentication, encryption, and signing. ChipSoft rejects certificates that don't meet its requirements. Track expiry dates and build a procedure for replacing certificates.
- Narrowly scoped tokens. A Zorgplatform token applies to a specific patient or workflow. Request the right token type per action and don't reuse it outside that context.
- Handling outages. An EHR or integration platform can also be unreachable for hours or days. Your integration needs a queue, retries, and a clear message for users.
- Logging without clinical content. Log message IDs, workflow IDs, and status codes, so you can trace a failed message without writing patient data to your log files.
- HiX upgrades. Several hospitals move to HiX 6.3 with standard content during 2026. Retest your integration on the acceptance environment with every upgrade.
Statutory data exchanges come on top of this. For the Dutch and European rules, read Wegiz as a build requirement and EHDS as a build requirement.
Common mistakes in a HiX integration
These are the mistakes we see most often in integrations with an electronic health record:
- Building before the hospital commissions the work. Without a request from the care provider to ChipSoft, you won't get past the development connection.
- Assuming one configuration. Standard content narrows the differences, yet message profiles and fields still vary per site.
- Testing only the happy path. Duplicate messages, corrections, merged patient records, and messages out of sequence all happen in production.
- Matching patients by name. Use the hospital's patient number or the BSN, as the interface specifies.
- Forgetting certificates. An expired certificate takes an integration down just as hard as an outage.
- No owner for operations. Agree who monitors messages, who calls ChipSoft, and who informs the hospital.
Isatis has built integrations for more than 30 years between systems that each have their own rules, from maintenance software for aviation to a subsidy administration platform and RFID in the supply chain. We have 30+ engineers in Nijmegen and Sarajevo, more than 100 projects behind us, and ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 certification. Read more about software integration, API development, and our work in healthcare, or book a call about your HiX integration.
Frequently asked questions
What is HiX?
HiX is the electronic health record and hospital information system from ChipSoft in Amsterdam. The name stands for Healthcare Information eXchange. In early 2026, 76% of Dutch hospitals used HiX. General practices, independent treatment centers, rehabilitation, elderly care, pharmacies, and mental health care use it as well.
Does HiX have a FHIR API?
Yes. External apps use the FHIR APIs of ChipSoft Zorgplatform, including APIs for workflow, documents, administration, home monitoring, and the Dutch patient summary dataset. Access runs on SAML 2.0 and XUA tokens from the Zorgplatform Security Token Service. Inside the hospital, many integrations still use HL7 v2.
Who has to approve an integration with HiX?
The care provider. It commissions the connection from ChipSoft and agrees the details with the supplier and with ChipSoft. Some Zorgplatform data services also require explicit consent from the patient.
Can I integrate with HiX without a hospital as a customer?
Only for the first build phase. An approved developer portal account gives you a development connection. The test, acceptance, and production connections only follow when a care provider commissions them.
