The European digital health market is growing and, at the same time, concentrating: capital goes to fewer and larger companies, and underneath sits a long tail of small suppliers. We are one of them.
That creates a risk that rarely appears in a specification and belongs entirely to the institution: the equipment stays, the supplier may not.
Better to discuss it head on than to hope nobody asks.
Why this differs from other sectors
If a chair supplier closes, the chairs remain chairs. In software and connected equipment, a product can stop working without anyone touching it: a licence that expires, a server that shuts down, an app store that stops serving the app.
The right question is not "are you solid?", everyone says yes. It is:
What keeps working on the day you disappear?
The seven questions
They apply to any small health technology supplier:
- Does the product work without your servers? If the answer is no, you are buying a subscription to a service, not equipment.
- Does it need internet for normal use?
- If the company disappears, what exactly stops working, and when?
- Is data exportable in an open format, without asking you for anything?
- Who can repair or replace the hardware other than you?
- What does the contract provide for on termination, insolvency or acquisition?
- How many people can keep this running? If it is one, it is a person, not a company.
Our answers, including the ones that do not favour us
What keeps working without us:
- Playback of already installed content. The scenarios sit on the device and run without internet. A headset with the library installed keeps running sessions.
- Control from the browser, because it runs on the institution's local network, not our cloud.
- The hardware. The equipment is commercial and unmodified by us; it is not bricked.
What stops working:
- New content. The catalogue is generated from our backoffice. Without us, the library freezes at whatever is installed.
- Updates to the application, fixes and new features.
- Support, training and replacement of faulty equipment under contract.
- Modules in development, which are already outside the medical device registration and should not weigh in a purchase decision.
Plainly: sessions continue, evolution stops. That is a better answer than many products that need a cloud to function at all, and a worse one than "nothing changes", which would not be true.
What an institution can require by contract
None of this is exotic and most suppliers accept it, if asked:
- Data export in an open format, on request and at no cost.
- Notice period on discontinuation of service.
- A continuity clause guaranteeing continued use of what is installed.
- Operating documentation sufficient for someone else to understand the system.
If a supplier refuses the first one, that is a signal in itself.
The other side, which is also honest
Large companies discontinue products just as readily: only without warning and with nobody to talk to. "Buy from the biggest" reduces insolvency risk and increases irrelevance risk: a small product inside a large company is the first thing cut in a reorganisation.
What genuinely reduces risk is not supplier size. It is the architecture (does it work without them?) and the contract.
In short
- The equipment stays, the supplier may not, and the risk is the institution's.
- The question is what keeps working, not whether the supplier is solid.
- With us: sessions continue (installed content, local network, commercial hardware) and evolution stops (new content, updates, support).
- Require data export and a continuity clause. Whoever refuses is answering you.
- Buying from the biggest trades one risk for another, it does not remove it.
Frequently asked questions
What happens to the equipment if the supplier closes?
It depends entirely on the architecture. With RVer, playback of already installed content keeps working because the scenarios sit on the device and run without internet, browser control keeps working because it runs on the institution's local network, and the hardware is commercial and unmodified. What stops is new content, which is generated from our backoffice, plus updates, support and equipment replacement.
What should you ask a small supplier before buying?
Whether the product works without the supplier's servers, whether it needs internet for normal use, what exactly stops working if the company disappears, whether data is exportable in an open format without asking permission, who can repair the hardware other than the supplier, what the contract provides for on termination or insolvency, and how many people can keep the system running.
Is it safer to buy from a large company?
It trades one risk for another. It reduces insolvency risk and increases discontinuation risk: a small product inside a large company is usually the first thing cut in a reorganisation, often without warning and with nobody to talk to. What genuinely reduces risk is the product architecture and what the contract says, not the size of whoever sells it.