Frequently asked questions

Because we are not a manufacturer. That independence changes everything: we have no catalogue of buttons to defend, no hardware generation to shift, no interest in selling you more than you need. We integrate the equipment that truly suits your care home — Blueup for beacons, Shelly for building automation, 3CX for telephony, Ubiquiti for networking. The established manufacturers (Televic, Ascom, Ackermann) operate on a proprietary model: their hardware, their protocols, their upgrade roadmap. Healthcall offers the opposite: open architecture, transparent costs, four updates a year with no extra charge, and no fifteen-year contractual lock-in.

Because no one ever blames a director for having "picked the market leader". But that apparent safety has a price: proprietary hardware, high maintenance costs, little room to negotiate. We offer a human-scale alternative, with an open architecture and full economic transparency. In 8 years, only one care home has left us — for a competing solution that had promised the earth. We know, from that very client, that the promise was not kept. This anecdote illustrates what we push back against: aggressive sales approaches that oversell and then deliver fragile systems. Healthcall makes the opposite choice: restraint, durability, and commitments we keep.

Yes. Our smallest client operates 30 beds, our largest 150. The Healthcall architecture is designed to start small without losing functionality: a compact local server, a proportionate number of buttons, a right-sized DECT fleet. You are not penalised by oversized minimum licences or unnecessarily activated modules. The annual package scales with the number of beds actually equipped. Smaller operators particularly appreciate two points: the simplicity of a single point of contact based in Belgium, and transparent pricing from 50 € excl. VAT per button. No economies of scale reserved for large groups: the same pricing and the same included updates, for every size.

Yes. Several of our clients operate two or three sites with centralised supervision. Each site has its own autonomous local server — if one goes down, the others keep running normally. A group supervision console aggregates the key indicators (response rate, call volumes, alerts) across the whole estate. Reports can be generated per site or consolidated. Settings can be duplicated from one site to another to standardise practice, or kept site-specific to reflect local constraints (building architecture, resident profiles). For groups that run ten or more sites, we adapt the framework contract, the billing and the SLAs.

A traditional patient call system does one thing: a resident presses a button and a bell rings at the nurses' station. Healthcall offers a modern nurse call ecosystem: detection (button, fall, wandering), decision (intelligent routing by floor, call type, time and team), action (traced response, automatic presence logging, multi-colour signal lamp, reports). The same system includes carer telephony, intercom, central supervision, integrated time clock, traced night round and internal messaging. Where patient call is a piece of equipment, Healthcall is software that structures the work of carers.

Healthcall has been in production since 2017, which means eight years of continuous operation in Belgian care homes. The publisher, Groovit SRL, is based in Frasnes-lez-Anvaing. The solution today equips around twenty Belgian care homes, from 30 to 150 beds, safeguarding roughly 1,250 residents. Development is self-funded, with no credit or outside investor — our only shareholder is our clients' satisfaction. Over eight years of activity, only one site has left us. Clients installed in 2017 benefit today from exactly the same functionality as clients installed in 2026, thanks to the four major annual updates included in the maintenance contract.

Two working days for a care home of 60 to 100 beds in a standard configuration. All equipment arrives pre-configured from our workshop: call buttons, BLE beacons, 868 MHz radio gateways, DECT handsets, local servers. Technicians mount, wire, test and then activate the switchover. For larger care homes (up to 150 beds) or those with complex architecture (several buildings, older buildings without cable ducts), allow three to four days. Staff training is on top of this and lasts half a day per role (day, night, management). A fixed quote sets the number of days once the preliminary audit has been done — no scope drift mid-project.

No. The installation takes place while your team carries on working normally and residents go about their day. The new system coexists with the old one until the final switchover, which takes a few hours and can be scheduled in a quiet period. No stressful changeover weekend, no imposed service interruption. Technicians work room by room, wing by wing, with intervention windows agreed with your head nurse. For the most fragile residents, we move the room intervention to the most suitable moment (outside nap times, outside personal care). Continuity of care is a design constraint, not a sales promise.

Yes. Healthcall is an integration ecosystem, not a monolithic product. Depending on the state of the existing cabling and field equipment, three scenarios are possible: full removal and fresh install (the most common case), partial reuse of buttons or signal lamps that are compatible with our open protocols (reduces hardware cost), or a transitional dual layer during a pilot phase on one wing. We carry out a free technical audit before any proposal. Our clients have migrated from older wired systems (Ackermann, Bosch) and from proprietary DECT systems — with no service interruption and no loss of historical data.

Rarely. Most of our deployments use the 868 MHz radio network for call buttons and BLE beacons for presence detection — wireless technologies that require no additional cable pulls. If your care home already has category 5e or 6 IP cabling for phones and servers, we reuse it in full. Only very old configurations (buildings from before 1990 without any IT network) require some extra cabling, limited to critical points (nurses' station, local server). The technical audit precisely quantifies what needs to be added — typically a few hundred metres of UTP cable, not a complete overhaul. No chasing into walls, no full rework of ceilings.

Six to twelve weeks on average between signing the purchase order and going live. Typical schedule: week 1-2 detailed technical audit and finalising the quote, week 3-4 ordering and workshop preparation (equipment configuration), week 5-8 delivery, on-site installation (2 to 4 days), team training (1 day), coexistence phase with the old system, week 9-10 final switchover and removal of the old system. Timelines can be compressed if your care home is available and the existing cabling is suitable. Large multi-site projects or full renovations take longer — we draw up a precise reverse schedule from the audit onwards.

Our timelines are contractual, not indicative. If an unforeseen issue arises on our side (supplier delay, technical incident on a device), we absorb the extension and associated costs. If the unforeseen issue comes from the site (building works not finished, rooms inaccessible), we reschedule at no extra cost within reason. In eight years of activity, no installation has overrun the initial schedule by more than two days. We prefer to plan generously from the audit stage rather than announcing an overly tight timeline that would put you in difficulty. The critical phases (switchover, training) are always validated jointly before being launched — nothing is imposed on your team.

Healthcall integrates four main technology families: 868 MHz radio (long-range, low-power call buttons), Wi-Fi (supervision, tablets, fixed stations), Bluetooth Low Energy (in-room presence detection, anti-wandering bracelets, indoor location) and IP cabling (DECT handsets, local server, IP intercoms, signal lamps). The choice among these technologies depends on your building configuration, existing cabling, budget constraints and priority use cases. We do not push one technology on principle — every project is the subject of a reasoned technical trade-off.

No, and that is a deliberate strategic choice. Healthcall is a software publisher and integrator, not a hardware manufacturer. We work with recognised IoT partners whose job is to design reliable buttons: Blueup, Shelly, Lehmann, Pragma, Sonitor, Ajax. That separation of roles frees us from the manufacturer-integrator conflict of interest: we have no hardware stock to shift, no generation to defend, no incentive to sell you a costlier button than needed. If a supplier releases a better product tomorrow, we integrate it. Traditional manufacturer-integrators (Televic, Ascom) cannot do this without cannibalising their own catalogue.

In most cases, yes. Healthcall integrates natively with 3CX exchanges and Snom, Grandstream and Doro DECT handsets — all widely used in Belgian care homes. If your fleet is of another brand (Mitel, Spectralink, Gigaset), we validate compatibility during the audit: SIP protocols, ringtone profiles, prioritisation of emergency calls. Standard market IP intercoms are generally compatible. For call buttons, compatibility depends on the manufacturer's protocol — older proprietary systems are often incompatible, but we can make them coexist temporarily during a transition phase. The audit details line by line what can be reused and what cannot, with a costed impact on the quote.

Our partners are stable and openly named, grouped by family: for IoT and buttons, Blueup (BLE beacons), Shelly (building automation), Lehmann (medical buttons), Pragma (environmental sensors), Sonitor (ultrasound detection), Ajax (intrusion detection); for telephony, 3CX (IP exchange), Snom, Grandstream and Doro (DECT handsets); for networking, Ubiquiti (Wi-Fi, switches, routing); for hosting, Belgian premium host (premium Belgian host). These partnerships are built for the long term: even when a newcomer appears on the market, we favour technical stability and support availability over marketing novelty.

The initial technical audit analyses five dimensions: building architecture (number of floors, materials, possible cable lengths), existing network (IP cabling, Wi-Fi, telephony), resident profiles (independent, semi-dependent, Alzheimer's, fall risk), working practices (day and night teams, carer ratios, DECT habits) and available budget. From that we derive a reasoned technology proposal: for example 868 MHz radio for buttons (range, 5-7 year battery), BLE for in-room presence, Snom DECT for carers, multi-colour IP signal lamp at each room entrance, redundant local server at the nurses' station. If a specific constraint leads us to recommend something different from another care home, we justify it. No one-size-fits-all solution imposed — every project is individually sized.

Yes. The 868 MHz frequency is a European band reserved for professional IoT applications, very lightly used, with excellent wall-penetration performance (better than Wi-Fi 2.4 GHz or Bluetooth in most care home buildings). The call buttons we deploy have a battery life of 5 to 7 years in standard use, with early alerting before critical discharge. The typical range from a button to a radio gateway is 30 to 80 metres depending on the architecture, which covers most care home layouts without multiplying gateways. Clients installed in 2017 still partly use their original radio gateways — the technology is mature and future-proof.

The public price is from 50 € excl. VAT per nurse call button for the hardware. For a care home of 80 beds, this represents an order of magnitude of 4,000 to 6,000 € depending on the equipment scenarios (bedrooms only, bathrooms, corridors, communal points). Three further items are added: the annual software licence (quoted according to the modules activated), the installation on a fixed fee (two days billed), and training (half a day per role). The four annual updates are included in the licence, with no upgrade surcharge. We issue a line-by-line detailed quote after the free technical audit — no opaque package, no surcharge discovered mid-contract.

Four main categories are included in the annual package: the four major updates per year (new features, fixes, usability improvements), technical support in French and Dutch by phone and ticket with critical priority on safety functions, hosting on a high-availability private cluster at a Belgian premium host with a triple database in mirroring, and remote technical supervision (monitoring of local servers, proactive alerts in the event of an anomaly). Not included: replacement of hardware outside the manufacturer's warranty, scope changes (adding modules, extending to new beds) and on-site interventions (billed by call-out). The exact detail is set out in the contract supplied with each quote.

No, this is one of our structural commitments. The four major annual updates are included in the package, with no separate invoicing from one version to another. A site installed in 2017 benefits today from the same functional level as a new site installed in 2026 — no paid migration, no stranded generation. The only costs that may rise are the ones you control: adding modules (fall detection, wandering prevention), extending to new beds, replacing an ageing DECT fleet. All are quoted in advance. Our economic model explicitly rejects the upgrade surcharges billed by some proprietary competitors — we refuse that pattern.

Over five years, the typical gap observed by our clients who have migrated is between 25 and 40 % in favour of Healthcall — essentially through three levers: no version upgrade surcharge (typically saving 8 to 15 k€ over 5 years for an average care home), transparent hardware pricing at 50 € per button versus proprietary buttons often two to three times more expensive, and internal support in Belgium with no subcontracting. We do not publish a precise costed comparison in this FAQ because it depends on the exact configuration (reusable existing fleet, number of modules, size). Our comparison pages go criterion by criterion.

Hardware can be financed via leasing through our finance partners, over 36 to 60 months depending on the amounts. The software licence remains on an annual SaaS model (no leasing on intangible items). For care homes that prefer to smooth out the investment load, we also offer an all-in monthly package that covers hardware, licence, maintenance and support — a pure opex model, useful for care home groups consolidating their cash position. The precise terms (rate, duration, buy-back clause at end of lease) depend on the overall amount and on the finance partner.

Four major updates per year, included in the maintenance contract. No upgrade cost billed, no migration to pay for. Updates are rolled out at night, during periods of low activity, with a prior backup and automatic rollback in the event of an anomaly. New features are documented in a release note in French, sent to your head nurse and your management a few days before deployment. Critical security fixes are applied out of cycle, immediately. A site installed in 2017 receives exactly the same updates as a site installed in 2026 — no obsolete generation, no abandoned fleet.

Three levels work together. Preventive maintenance: 24/7 remote supervision of the local servers and the central cluster, proactive detection of anomalies (full disk, low button battery, radio gateway losing signal), scheduled interventions before you notice the problem. Corrective maintenance: incidents raised by your team are handled by priority according to criticality, with an SLA for immediate remote intervention on safety functions. Evolutive maintenance: four major updates per year, configuration changes on request (new routing rule, adding a floor, changing teams) at no extra cost. Our support is in-house and based in Belgium — you are never redirected to an outsourced call centre.

SLA commitments vary according to incident criticality: immediate remote intervention (within a few minutes during office hours, less than an hour outside those hours) on any incident affecting a safety function — resident call, signal lamp, DECT routing, central supervision. On-site intervention within 48 working hours if the remote route does not resolve it, with immediate loan of equipment when a resident is impacted. Non-critical incidents (reports, configuration, ancillary modules) are handled within 5 working days. Our standard support hours are Belgian office hours with on-call technical cover outside those hours for safety emergencies. The exact contractual details are set out in the maintenance contract supplied with each quote.

Nothing, from the carers' point of view. All critical functions — resident call, response, signal lamp, routing to carer handsets, presence detection — run locally on a server installed in your care home. The internet connection is only used for synchronisation with the private cluster for consolidated reports, updates and remote supervision. If your fibre goes down, your care team does not notice. The private cluster at a Belgian premium host resumes synchronisations as soon as the link is restored, with no data loss. This architecture is a deliberate choice: resident safety cannot depend on a telecoms operator's availability. It is a structural difference from certain fully cloud-based competing solutions.

Four major updates per year, which amounts to a quarterly cycle. Each cycle brings a mix: new features (added module, interface improvement, new report type), fixes (bugs raised by the client base, performance improvements) and security (dependency updates, tightening of controls). Between two major updates we continuously apply minor fixes and security patches — without public announcement but tracked for the technical teams. Clients who wish to can defer the application of a major update by a few weeks if their care calendar requires it (quality certification, external audit), provided this does not compromise safety.

In Belgium, exclusively. High-availability private cluster at a Belgian premium host, a premium Belgian host, with a triple database in mirroring and server redundancy. No data transits through non-European public clouds (AWS, Azure, GCP) or subcontractors outside the EU. Network flows between your care home and the cluster are encrypted end to end (TLS 1.3). For care homes that require a fully on-premise configuration with no cloud synchronisation, we deploy the entire back end on a physical server on your premises, with deferred synchronisation limited to consolidated reports and software updates. Sovereignty of health data is a firm commitment from Healthcall, not an option.

Yes, by design. Several safeguards are built in: hosting in Belgium only, access traceability by user and by device, fine-grained rights management (a carer sees what they need, nothing more), on-demand export of personal data via a dedicated interface, automatic purge according to configurable retention periods. Our GDPR data processing agreement is handed to you at signing, with standard clauses on retention periods, the right to erasure, breach notification (72 hours) and cooperation with the supervisory authority (the Belgian DPA). For care homes with an external DPO, we provide the requested technical and organisational documentation directly.

Three levels of backup coexist. Real-time backup: the triple database in mirroring ensures a write is present on three nodes simultaneously — a server failure loses no data. Daily backup: a full snapshot each night to separate storage within the premium private cluster, with a rolling 30-day retention. Monthly backup: an encrypted archive on a secondary backup site in Belgium, retained for 12 months. Restoring to a previous state (for example after a major user error) is available on request within a few hours. Backups are tested monthly under real restore conditions — a backup that has never been tested is not a backup.

Yes, both modes are offered. Private cloud (standard mode): a local server in your care home for critical functions plus encrypted synchronisation to the premium private cluster for reports, supervision and updates. Benefits: no server maintenance at your end, proactive supervision, secure remote access. Fully on-premise: the entire back end runs on a physical server on your premises, with no cloud synchronisation. Benefits: maximum sovereignty, total absence of outbound flows, useful for public care homes or certain religious congregations. Constraints: server maintenance at your expense (disk, power, climate control), updates deployed on site by our teams. The choice depends on your internal policy and your DPO. We explain the concrete implications during the audit.

Retention periods are configurable by data type, in line with Belgian legal requirements and the GDPR. Typically: detailed intervention data (call timestamp, response, carer) kept 2 to 5 years according to your internal policy, aggregated anonymised reports kept longer for statistical purposes, named resident data deleted on request in line with the right to erasure as soon as the processing purpose is no longer justified (typically on departure of the resident plus the statutory medical record retention period). The automatic purge runs in the background, with an audit log. Your DPO sets the periods at deployment and can adjust them at any time. Regional specifics (AViQ in Wallonia, the Flemish decree, Iriscare in Brussels) are taken into account.

Access is strictly limited by role and traced. Carers: access to call data for their care home only, read-only on history, with identification by login at the start of shift. Head nurses: the same scope plus access to reports, configuration of routing rules, team management. Management: access to consolidated dashboards, export reports and user management. Our Healthcall technical teams: occasional access as required by operations (intervention, debugging), traced in an audit log that you can consult, with a strong authentication procedure. No permanent access, no default access. Every external access leaves a dated trace that your DPO can consult. Mass data exports require a formal request.

Half a day per role is enough in the vast majority of cases. Typical plan: 90 minutes for the day team (login/logout, call response, care action logging, presence detection), 90 minutes for the night team (automated round, emergency button, short reports), 60 minutes for management and the head nurse (dashboard, configurable reports, export, supervision). Training takes place on site, in real-world conditions, with the final equipment. A follow-up session three weeks in is included — that is when the real questions emerge once the initial learning curve is over. For large recruitment waves (typically September), we offer refresher sessions on request, remotely or on site.

48 hours of supervised use is enough to reach full autonomy on the everyday functions — sign-in, call response, care action logging, presence detection. The advanced functions (configured reports, multi-team management, tailored night round) take one to two weeks of regular use to master. The interface is designed so that first use is intuitive, with no lengthy training: clear icons, care vocabulary (no IT jargon) and immediate feedback on actions. Our clients consistently report that the carers most reluctant about IT are the first to be convinced after a few days of use. A good indicator: the number of support calls typically drops by 80 % between the first and fourth week.

Yes, several formats coexist. Short video tutorials (2 to 5 minutes) hosted in the News/Messaging module, accessible directly from the carer's DECT handset — particularly useful for new joiners. A printable PDF user guide, updated with each major version, available from the dashboard. Laminated quick-reference cards for the nurses' stations (login, emergency codes, fault procedure). Remote training sessions available on request via video call for refreshers or specific training. Your head nurse has a dedicated area to publish their own internal procedures inside the interface — useful for standardising practice and sharing experience between teams.

Post-installation support is organised in four phases. Week 1: increased presence of our team on site or on remote standby to clear any blockers during real-world start-up. Week 3: scheduled follow-up session with your head nurse to fine-tune the settings (routing rules, team hours, call types) based on field observation. Month 3: full review — key indicators (response rate, volumes, alerts), team satisfaction and change requests. Ongoing: responsive support in French and Dutch, prioritised handling by criticality, evolutive interventions on request. No aggressive commercial follow-up post-installation, no attempt to systematically push extra modules on you — you call us when you need to.

The standard commitment is 36 months for the software licence and maintenance, renewable for 12-month periods. This duration matches the reasonable amortisation of the hardware investment and team training. Some all-in monthly packages (hardware plus licence plus maintenance in pure opex) may have different durations, typically 48 to 60 months. We do not impose the 10- to 15-year lock-ins used by some established competitors — that model traps the client without technical justification and prevents you from renegotiating or migrating if service quality declines. Contractual transparency is part of our positioning: no hidden clause, no abusive tacit renewal.

Yes, subject to standard contractual conditions. Termination for convenience at the main renewal date with 6 months' notice. Termination for just cause (material breach on our part of the service commitments) with no indemnity, after a formal notice left without effect. Termination due to force majeure (site closure, takeover by a group that imposes its own system) is negotiated case by case, with a pro rata on amortised hardware. We do not impose deterrent penalty clauses — our interest is to keep you through service quality, not contractual lock-in. The only client who has left us in 8 years was able to do so without any contractual difficulty, at their normal renewal date.

Three scenarios are covered contractually. Site closure: early termination with no indemnity on presentation of the administrative evidence, with recovery of equipment by our teams or buy-back at residual book value depending on your preference. Takeover by a group that already uses Healthcall: simplified migration, transfer of settings and history to the group's framework contract, retention of installed equipment. Takeover by a group that uses a different system: migration support, a possible coexistence period during the transition, and a full export of data in a standard format (JSON, CSV) compliant with GDPR requirements. In every case, your data remains yours — no retention, no clause that would prevent you from leaving.

Standard manufacturer warranty on all hardware (buttons, BLE beacons, radio gateways, DECT handsets, local servers): a minimum of 24 months, with possible extensions depending on the manufacturer (some Blueup and Lehmann buttons run up to 36 or 60 months). Our service commitment, for its part, covers the full duration of the maintenance contract, beyond the manufacturer's warranty: replacement of a faulty device within 48 working hours, or an immediate loan if a resident is impacted. Software faults are handled at critical priority when they affect a safety function. The exact contractual details (duration by equipment family, excess, exclusions) are set out in the maintenance contract supplied with each quote.