Driven by increasing pressure around data sovereignty and security, particularly in the European market, SAP has partnered with Fresenius to develop a platform that supports data sovereignty and AI-enabled processes within a controlled environment, while maintaining compliance with industry standards such as HL7 FHIR. But what does this mean for healthcare organizations today, and how can you assess whether this direction affects your existing SAP landscape?
The Core Announcement: SAP & Fresenius Partnership
On January 19, 2026, SAP and Fresenius announced a strategic partnership with the shared goal of creating a “digital backbone” for the healthcare industry. By combining the healthcare expertise of Fresenius, one of the world’s leading healthcare companies, with SAP’s platform capabilities, the initiative aims to build a sovereign, interoperable and AI-enabled platform for hospitals and medical facilities worldwide.
| Area | Description |
|---|---|
| Sovereignty & Security | The primary focus of this partnership is to create an environment where AI models can be operated for doctors and hospital teams on a platform that meets the highest standards of data sovereignty and regulatory compliance, particularly for the European market. |
| The “AnyEMR” Strategy | Part of the problem that healthcare companies face is the need to overcome the hurdle of ensuring compliance when exchanging health information electronically across healthcare systems. To ensure compliance, this joint program has ensured that industry standards like HL7 FHIR are integrated to connect modern Hospital Information Systems (HIS), Electronic Medical Records (EMRs), and other medical apps into a unified ecosystem (Interoperability). |
| Supporting Digital Transformation Roadmaps | With the growing role of AI-driven automation and prediction in all industries that operate with ERP software, this partnership has opened the opportunity for SAP partners, service providers, and system integrators to help healthcare clients accelerate their own transformation. |
How This Aligns With SAP’s Wider Strategic Push of AI
This initiative is a part of SAP’s broader AI and data strategy, particularly following their SAP Business AI: Release Highlights that focuses on their Business AI portfolio, which has been emphasised by SAP as of recently. As evidence from the blog, SAP has been slowly advancing it’s AI capabilities, particularly advancing its SAP Business Technology Platform with tools such as the AI Foundation, Joule Studio, and SAP-RPT-1, a relational AI model tailored for structuring business data.
The Fresenius announcement also emphasizes the significance of “European sovereignty,” which coincides with SAP’s recent launch of the EU AI Cloud in Q4 2025, aimed at supporting EU data residency and full sovereignty.
Continually, SAP has been identifying ways to overcome the problem of data residency in Europe and signalling their intention for European customers wary of US and Asia-centric by introducing these initiatives that meet stringent governance standards and addressing security, privacy, and compliance practices. Because of this, the partnership with Fresenius was another opportunity for SAP to demonstrate, to the healthcare industry, that they are leading in industry-specific AI deployments that comply with European AI sovereignty and regulatory alignment.
Assessing Whether This Initiative Is Relevant to Your Business?
For healthcare organisations, this partnership initiative is about improving how existing SAP platforms and services can be better optimized for healthcare businesses and building upon what is already provided by SAP. This means that there is nothing new to “buy” per say because of this partnership but still requires the architectural prerequisites to benefit for future innovations. Organisations may still require:
- SAP BTP services (consumption-based)
- SAP Business AI capabilities, either tied to their SAP solutions already or purchased separately
- Appropriate cloud or sovereign cloud deployments, depending on regulatory needs
This is important to consider as any future healthcare innovations on SAP will likely assume that these foundations are already in place.
How We Can Help
At JNC, our teams have supported multiple healthcare companies, both European and Globally, in ensuring that our clients receive the best strategic, architectural and commercial support via their SAP direction. Our team specialises in leveraging the applied experience from multiple healthcare and regulated-industry projects, whether it is supporting an entire SAP landscape transition through cost modelling or support for specific complex capabilities such as Quality and Batch Management for Healthcare.
Whether it is transitioning an entire SAP landscape to comply with regulatory standards by moving towards a Sovereign Cloud deployment or general audit advice, it is crucial to understand the consequences of taking such significant transformations. Discussing the next steps and planning with consultants is an integral part of clarifying how these developments align with your current SAP landscape and ensuring alignment, compliance and long-term readiness when it comes to AI and Sovereignty.
This article was written by Benjamin Clare.
Connect with Benjamin on LinkedIn to stay informed on SAP licensing, commercial strategy and security best practices.
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