SAP SE and Fresenius announced on January 19 a strategic technology partnership designed to accelerate innovation in digital healthcare delivery by building a sovereign, interoperable, and AI-powered healthcare ecosystem for Europe and beyond.
The collaboration brings together SAP’s enterprise software and AI capabilities and Fresenius’s healthcare expertise with the goal of transforming how hospitals and medical facilities use data and AI, while ensuring high standards of data sovereignty, security, and compliance.
At the heart of this initiative is the creation of a scalable healthcare platform that will serve as a digital backbone for connected, data-driven processes across the care continuum. Leveraging core SAP technologies such as SAP Business Suite, SAP Business Data Cloud (BDC), SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP), and SAP Business AI, the platform is designed to support secure data exchange, compliant AI operations, and integration with existing clinical systems.
Partnership Made for Patients
A key ambition of the partnership is to build an open, interoperable ecosystem that supports seamless connectivity between varying hospital information systems (HIS) and electronic medical records (EMRs) via open standards like Health Level Seven International (HL7) Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR), highlighting SAP’s broader AnyEMR strategy.
SAP’s Any-EMR Strategy is designed to enable industry-standard interoperability while positioning SAP as the core of a modular hospital information system. The approach supports the use of best-in-class ERP and analytics capabilities, alongside SAP BTP for integration and innovation. Built on SAP BTP and SAP S/4HANA, the strategy is intended to support complex healthcare IT landscapes as providers respond to growing system diversity and accelerating digital transformation.
The multi-million-euro partnership has various forms of collaboration, including joint investments in startups and scaleups, joint technological developments, and close cooperation between companies with coordinated governance structures.
“Together with SAP, we […] are making data and AI everyday companions that are secure, simple, and scalable for doctors and hospital teams,” said Michael Sen, CEO of Fresenuis.
What This Means for ERP Insiders
Healthcare is moving from an adjacent vertical to a strategic growth priority. This partnership reinforces healthcare as a core industry focus for SAP, not just a niche application area. Interoperability, AI, and data sovereignty are no longer secondary requirements but foundational design constraints in SAP’s healthcare roadmap. ERP strategy leaders can see this as a signal of sustained investment in healthcare-specific architectures and platform capabilities rather than isolated point solutions.
Complex healthcare environments are proving grounds for enterprise platforms. Hospitals and health systems combine strict regulatory oversight, fragmented system landscapes, and high availability requirements, making them a stress test for enterprise platforms. Real-world deployments in this context are likely to surface practical lessons around how SAP Business AI, SAP BTP, and data platforms can be applied under tight governance constraints. For enterprise architects, the value lies less in individual use cases and more in understanding how innovation can be deployed without weakening data control, security, or compliance.
Interoperability expands opportunities for partners and integrators. The emphasis on open standards such as HL7 FHIR shifts value creation toward integration, orchestration, and domain-specific extensions. This creates clear opportunities for SAP partners and systems integrators to build certified connectors, workflow accelerators, and AI-enabled services that bridge clinical and administrative systems. This points to new partnership models and co-innovation opportunities emerging at the intersection of healthcare interoperability and enterprise platforms.
