This document introduces a course on interoperability and semantic technologies. It defines interoperability and its different levels, including functional and semantic interoperability. It also discusses challenges related to standardization in healthcare like the variety of standards, the need for translation between standards, and the high costs of a lack of interoperability. Finally, it presents how semantic technologies like RDF, SPARQL and OWL can help address these challenges by providing flexible models and languages that can embrace change and translation.