Care worker handling a call from a professional Android smartphone in a care home corridor, Healthcall installation

Communication

Nurse call for care homes: the Healthcall ecosystem

Nurse call system for Belgian care homes: open architecture, 11 integrated sub-functions, two-day installation, private cluster in Belgium. Since 2017.

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What is Healthcall nurse call?

Healthcall is a nurse call system for Belgian care homes, published by Groovit since 2017. It enables a resident, a carer or a contextual sensor to trigger an alert, then routes that alert to the right person on their professional smartphone or DECT phone, and traces every intervention end-to-end.

Unlike hospital nurse call systems adapted after the fact to care homes, Healthcall was designed from the outset for the realities of the Belgian care home: small teams, individual rooms, AViQ and Woonzorgdecreet constraints, long-term residence, limited night-time presence. The product today equips around twenty facilities of 30 to 150 beds, securing the daily life of approximately 1,250 residents.

The system runs locally on an on-site server, synchronised with a high-availability private cluster hosted in Belgium at a Belgian premium host. Four major updates are included each year, with no evolution surcharge, no paid migration, no stuck software generation.

  • 8 years

    Healthcall in production

    since 2017, first client still active

  • 20+ care homes

    Trusted installed base

    ~1,250 residents, 1 departure in 8 years

  • 100% BE

    Data sovereignty

    premium private cluster, triple database

  • 4 updates/yr

    Included

    zero migration cost, no stuck generation

For more: complete Healthcall ecosystem · our independent integrator positioning.

Detection → Decision → Action: three simple gestures, thousands of times per day

Every intervention in a care home follows the same sequence. A signal appears, a decision is made, an action is executed. Healthcall orchestrates these three moments under a single rule: alert the right person, at the right moment, with the right information.

  1. Detection

    Trigger → timestamp

    Room push button, bathroom pull cord, fall sensor, BLE wandering beacon, voice command, carer emergency button on smartphone or DECT. Sensors coexist. Millisecond-accurate timestamp, immediate routing to decision, with no loss — even without internet.

  2. Decision

    Configurable rules

    Who receives? On which device? What escalation delay? Rules per floor, day/night team, call type, urgency, availability. A bathroom emergency does not ring like a comfort call. A night call escalates faster than a day call. The rules are yours.

  3. Action

    Handover + traceability

    Carer takes the call with one button press, goes to the room. Automatic BLE entry detection, care action logging of the gesture performed, exit time. Every intervention feeds the real-time dashboard and reports. Data becomes the basis for continuous improvement.

Five principles, eight years of practice

Healthcall is not an aggregate of features stacked up over requests. Every feature is evaluated against five principles, laid down with the care teams of the first care homes equipped in 2017.

  • Communication

    Smooth exchanges between residents, carers and families without replacing them. Natural gesture for each. Family mentioned as indirect beneficiary, never addressed in the tool — Healthcall remains strictly professional.

  • Knowledge

    Capture, structure, restore the data. Traces serving work organisation — not carer surveillance. Quality proof for AViQ, Zorginspectie, INAMI. Data belongs to your care home, exportable.

  • Integration

    Your care home is not a blank page. Healthcall interfaces with existing systems (telephone central, smartphone fleet, DECT fleet, network, old buttons, access control). No total overhaul imposed. A consequence of the non-manufacturer independence.

  • Optimisation

    Reduce unnecessary movements — visible handover, automatic presence detection, multi-colour signal lamp readable at distance. Free up care time for residents who really need it.

  • Reaction

    Alert the right person, at the right moment, with the right information. Differentiated rules: standard call, bathroom, urgent, night, geolocated carer emergency button. Never standardised — follows your priorities.

Call handover on professional Android smartphone in a floor corridor — multi-colour signal lamp in front of the room, automatic traceability. Illustrative visual (client shoot to be produced).

Eleven sub-functions, one coherent system

Where most competing systems bill each function separately or force layering of third-party software, Healthcall integrates eleven sub-functions under a single interface, a single contract, a single update.

  • 1. Carer login / logout

    Connection on shared professional Android smartphone or DECT of choice (short code or BLE badge). Business profile loaded (day, night, head nurse, technician). Hardware circulates, identity follows. No more named phones.

  • 2. Care action logging

    Intervention reason captured in seconds: voice dictation (transcribed), configured short list, or free note. Timestamped, linked to carer and room. Feeds the care record, supports AViQ and Woonzorgdecreet.

  • 3. Call handover

    One button, all other terminals stop ringing. Visual display: the call is taken by this carer. No more redundant movements. Readable in corridors (green signal lamp) and at supervision. Changes organisational culture.

  • 4. Automatic presence

    BLE beacons on the ceiling of each room. The smartphone or DECT detects entry/exit — no manual action. Knows who entered, when, how long. Call closure without additional input.

  • 5. Multi-colour signal lamp

    Corridor light signalling: green (handled), red (urgent unhandled), blue (technical), yellow (logistics). A carer understands at a glance the state of each room without consulting their terminal.

  • 6. Real-time dashboard

    Supervision station, tablet or head nurse smartphone: ongoing calls, 24h history, active carers, technical alarms, network health. The head nurse arbitrates reinforcements, understands real load. Not a punitive surveillance tool.

The five other sub-functions complete the pillar:

  • Integrated timeclock — login/logout also serves as time tracking. No more physical badge timeclocks or double entries. Exports compatible with payroll (CSV, API). Monthly reconciliation in minutes instead of half a day.
  • Configurable reports — PDF/CSV with cross-filters (period, team, type, duration, carer, floor). Predefined standard reports + bespoke on request. Compliance AViQ, Zorginspectie, INAMI audits. No generation or storage cost.
  • Automated night rounds — theoretical path, BLE presence validation (no badge), alert if room not visited in the window. Complete history required by regulators and insurers. Safety also for night carers.
  • Carer emergency button — shortcut key, geolocation via nearest BLE beacon, priority notification of reinforcements + supervision. First reinforcement typically < 60 seconds. Central for night shifts and advanced Alzheimer’s profiles.
  • News / messaging — service notes, health alerts, procedure reminders, short video tutorials consultable directly on the smartphone home screen. Read acknowledgement traced. Replaces paper displays in break rooms and messages lost in handover notebooks.

  • 2 days

    Care home installation

    60 to 100 beds, no operational shutdown

  • &lt; 60 sec

    First reinforcement

    on geolocated carer emergency button

  • 50 €

    Excl. VAT per button

    transparent public pricing, line-by-line quote

  • 4 techs

    Supported layers

    868 MHz, Wi-Fi, BLE, traditional cabling

Four technologies, depending on your building

No single technology suits 100% of care homes. The choice depends on the building, budget, equipment density, thick walls. Healthcall assembles the optimal combination — a direct consequence of our independent non-manufacturer integrator positioning.

  • 868 MHz wireless

    European free IoT frequency. 50-150 m indoor range, decent wall penetration, low consumption. Reference for renovated care homes without running cable. Compatible with Blueup, Ajax, Lehmann.

  • Secure Wi-Fi (802.11ac/ax)

    VLAN dedicated to medical equipment, WPA3 or EAP-TLS certificates. For professional Android smartphones, supervision tablets, DECT-IP, IP cameras. High-density Ubiquiti UniFi access points. Coexists with visitor Wi-Fi without traffic mixing.

  • Bluetooth Beacon (BLE)

    Ceiling beacons + strategic points (bathrooms, exits). 5-20 m range, 3-5 year battery life. Essential for carer presence, indoor geolocation, automated night rounds. Partners: Blueup, Sonitor.

  • Traditional cabling

    For care homes with historical bus or new-build imposing wired (fire compliance, architect preference). Interfacing if protocols allow, or new structured cabling. Minority option but sometimes the right answer.

For a complete technical comparison across 17 criteria: guide to nurse call technologies.

Healthcall-compatible equipment — Blueup, Lehmann, Ajax. Open architecture, no proprietary hardware imposed. Illustrative visual (client shoot to be produced).

Four scenarios, one single system

Call button in the room, in the middle of the night

3:14 am. Mrs D., room 24, presses the button above her bed. She needs help to get up. The system captures the signal, applies the night rules: priority ringing on the floor night carer’s terminal (shared professional smartphone or DECT depending on site equipment — no immediate escalation since only one carer), red signal lamp in front of room 24, discreet notification to central supervision. The carer takes the call in 4 seconds, the signal lamp turns green. Arrival in the room in 40 seconds, automatic BLE detection — traceability is complete without any additional gesture. Voice action logging “mobilisation” on exit. Total chain duration: less than 2 minutes for a non-urgent need.

Presence detection without manual logging

Morning round cycle. Sophie, care assistant, moves through five rooms in twenty minutes. In each room, the BLE beacon detects her entry and exit — no gesture on her smartphone, no badge to check in. While she is toileting Mr V., a call arrives from the neighbouring room: the system notes she is already busy in room 12 and routes the call to her colleague on the upper floor. This simple arbitration, invisible to residents and carers, avoids parasitic movements. At the end of the round, a single global action log “morning round” is entered for all visited rooms.

Monthly report to management

End of month. The director consults the Healthcall dashboard and generates in one click the standard monthly report: 1,847 handled calls, median response time 42 seconds, 94% of calls handled in under 60 seconds, breakdown by floor and team, top 5 most-calling rooms. She exports the PDF for the board and the CSV for her management spreadsheet. To prepare an AViQ inspection scheduled two weeks later, she also extracts action logs and night rounds for the quarter. Generation is instant, no cost, no technical dependency.

Carer emergency reinforcement

6:50 pm. Pierre, evening nurse, is alone in room 31 with a disoriented resident who has become agitated. He presses the emergency shortcut on his professional smartphone for two seconds. The system geolocates his position via the room BLE beacon, triggers a critical alert on the terminals of the two nearest carers (upper floor), and shows a red status on central supervision. First reinforcement arrives in 35 seconds, second in 55 seconds. The incident is automatically traced: timestamp, carers involved, room, resolution time. The next day, the head nurse reviews with Pierre and adjusts the routing rules or evening team composition if necessary.

Nurse call is the heart — not the boundary

Nurse call is the historical pillar module of Healthcall. It shares its technical base with the eleven other ecosystem modules, letting you progressively extend functional coverage without migration, dual cabling or new contract.

  • Wandering prevention

    BLE wristbands on the resident concerned, beacons at transit points (exits, lifts, secured doors). Immediate alert on crossing, with indoor geolocation.

  • Fall detection

    Vox floor sensors or wristbands equipped with accelerometer. Instant notification to the nearest carer via the same channel as nurse call.

  • Central supervision

    Unified duty station: all calls, all alarms, all rounds, all active carers on a single screen. Fire and intrusion alarm integration.

  • Carer phone

    Choice and integration of the professional Android smartphone or DECT fleet, network cabling, MDM and training. Technical module complementing the nurse call software.

To discover all modules: see the full ecosystem · compare to other market solutions.

Frequently asked questions

How long does a Healthcall installation take in a care home?
Two working days for a 60-to-100-bed care home in standard configuration. All equipment arrives pre-configured from our workshop: call buttons, BLE beacons, 868 MHz gateways, professional smartphones or DECT handsets, local servers. Your team continues to work normally during the installation. No service interruption is required. A switchover weekend is not needed: the new system coexists with the existing one until go-live, then the old one is decommissioned. For larger residences (up to 150 beds) or with complex architecture, allow three to four days. Team training adds half a day per profile (day, night, management).
Can we migrate from an existing Televic, Ackermann or Ascom system?
Yes. Healthcall is an integration ecosystem, not a monolithic product. Depending on the state of existing cabling and field equipment, three scenarios are possible: full removal and new installation (most frequent case, two days), partial reuse of buttons or signal lamps compatible with our open protocols (reduces hardware cost), or transitional dual layer during a pilot phase. We perform a free technical audit before any proposal. Our clients have migrated from old wired systems (Bosch, Ackermann) and from proprietary DECT systems — without service interruption.
Does Healthcall work during an internet outage?
Yes. All critical functions — resident call, call handover, signal lamp, routing to carer terminals — run locally on a server installed in your care home. The internet connection is only used for synchronisation with the private cluster for reporting, updates and remote supervision. If your fibre goes down, carers do not notice. The private cluster at a Belgian premium host resumes synchronisations once the connection is restored, without data loss. This architecture is a deliberate choice: resident safety cannot depend on a telecom operator.
What is the total cost of a Healthcall deployment?
The published public price is 50 € excl. VAT per nurse call button for the hardware. For an 80-bed facility, this represents roughly 4,000 to 6,000 € in button equipment depending on scenarios (single rooms, bathrooms, corridors). On top of this: the software licence (quote based on activated features), installation (two days at a fixed fee), training (half a day per profile). The four annual major updates are included, with no version-evolution surcharge. We provide a detailed line-by-line quote after audit — no opaque package.
Is it compatible with our existing phone fleet (smartphone or DECT)?
In most cases, yes. Healthcall integrates natively with the 3CX IP central and supports two terminal families: professional Android smartphones shared per duty station (Samsung XCover, Crosscall Core, CAT S, Sonim XP) — our default recommendation — and DECT phones from Snom, Grandstream and Doro as a proven alternative. If your care home is equipped with another brand (Mitel, Spectralink), we validate compatibility during the audit: SIP protocols, ring profiles, emergency call prioritisation. In some configurations, we recommend replacing the existing fleet to gain reliability and features (emergency shortcut keys, contextual screen, room photos, physician video). The choice remains yours. No equipment is imposed.
Do carers need to wear an additional badge?
No, not in the standard configuration. The carer logs in at the start of the shift on the shared terminal — professional smartphone or DECT depending on the facility's choice. Their identity follows the phone until logout at shift end. In-room presence detection uses Bluetooth Low Energy beacons read by the phone — no additional badge to wear. If you want to decouple identification from the phone (for example for equipment loaning between teams), compact BLE badges are available as an option. Most of our clients use only the phone, which also serves as identifier.
How does Healthcall guarantee GDPR compliance?
Several safeguards are built in by design. Resident health data never leaves Belgian territory: private cluster at a Belgian premium host in Brussels, triple database in mirroring. No sub-contracting outside the EU. Accesses are logged per user and per device. Personal data exports are performed on request via a dedicated interface. Our GDPR data processing agreement is handed over at signing, with standardised clauses on retention periods, right to be forgotten, breach notification. For care homes subject to an external DPO, we provide the requested technical and organisational documentation directly.
How much training time for the teams?
Half a day per business profile is sufficient in the vast majority of cases. Standard plan: 90 minutes for the day team (login/logout, call handover, care action logging, presence), 90 minutes for the night team (automated rounds, emergency button, short reports), 60 minutes for management (dashboard, configurable reports, export). A follow-up session at three weeks is included — that's where the real questions emerge. For new carers arriving after deployment, the News/Messaging module lets your head nurse train internally, with short video tutorials consultable directly on the smartphone — the touch screen makes video viewing particularly fluid.
What is the hardware warranty duration?
Manufacturer warranty on equipment (buttons, phones, beacons, servers): 24 months standard, with possible extensions depending on manufacturer. Our service commitment covers the entire maintenance contract duration: replacement of a faulty device within 48 working hours, or immediate loan if the care staff is impacted. Software failures are treated with critical priority if they affect a safety function (call, signal lamp, carer phone). Contractual details are specified in the maintenance agreement provided with each quote.
Can the system be extended after initial installation?
Yes. The modular architecture is designed precisely for this. You can start with nurse call alone and then add fall detection, wandering prevention, central supervision, access control or building automation — without migration or dual cabling. Each module shares the same technical base: 868 MHz wireless or Wi-Fi network, BLE beacons, local server, smartphones or DECT handsets. Activation of an additional module is done remotely, with brief complementary training. This is a structuring choice compared to monolithic solutions that impose a complete overhaul for every new feature.
Where is our resident data hosted?
In Belgium, in a high-availability private cluster at a Belgian premium host. Triple database in mirroring, server redundancy, contractual high-availability SLA. No data transits to non-European public clouds (AWS, Azure, GCP) or to sub-contractors outside the EU. For care homes that require a 100% on-premise configuration, we deploy the entire back-end on a physical server at your site, with deferred synchronisation for reports and updates. Health data sovereignty is a strong Healthcall commitment.
What support is available in case of incident?
Technical support in French, Dutch and English, by phone and ticket. Incidents affecting a safety function (call, signal lamp, carer phone) are handled with critical priority, with immediate remote intervention and, if necessary, on-site visit within 48 working hours. Configuration or evolution requests are planned in monthly sprints. Our support is in-house, based in Belgium — you are never redirected to an external call centre. Precise commitments (hours, response times, escalation) are in the maintenance contract.
Can it be configured differently per team, floor or time slot?
Yes, with fine granularity. Call routing follows configurable rules: per floor, per wing, per call type (standard, urgent, bathroom), per team (day, night, weekend), per hour. A 2 pm call from room 24 can, for example, ring on the floor carer's smartphone and then, after 30 seconds without handover, escalate to the head nurse and then to central supervision. At night, the rules change: fewer carers, so faster escalations. The dashboard lets you adjust these rules yourself, without depending on our teams.
How often are software updates released?
Four major updates per year, included in the maintenance contract. No evolution fee charged, no migration to pay. Updates are deployed at night, during low-activity hours, with prior backup and automatic rollback on anomaly. New features are documented in a release note in French, Dutch and English, sent to your head nurse and management. Critical security patches are applied out of cycle, immediately. A facility installed in 2017 enjoys today the same functional level as one installed in 2026 — no paid migration, no stuck generation.
How is new carer training handled after installation?
Two mechanisms are provided. First, your head nurse becomes an internal trainer thanks to the short video tutorials hosted in the News/Messaging module, accessible directly from the new carer's terminal — the smartphone touch screen makes video consultation particularly fluid. Second, we offer refresher sessions on demand, remotely or on-site, for large hiring waves (typically September). The autonomy rate after 48 hours of supervised use systematically exceeds expectations — the interface is designed so that first pickup happens naturally, in real conditions, without long training.

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