Zoho Creator is now HDS certified, running on EU data centers that are owned, operated, and maintained by Zoho. The certification confirms that Creator meets the technical, security, and governance requirements for hosting personal health data under French law.
In France, one certification determines whether a platform can legally host patient data on behalf of healthcare institutions. Until now, most low-code platforms couldn't clear that bar.
What is HDS certification?
HDS stands for Hébergeur de Données de Santé, which translates to "Health Data Host." It's a certification issued under Article L.1111-8 of the code de la santé publique, applicable to any organization that hosts, processes, or manages personal health data on behalf of French healthcare institutions.
The HDS framework is governed by the Agence du Numérique en Santé (ANS) and applies to both infrastructure providers and software platforms. It's renewed every three years and requires ongoing compliance, not just a one-time audit.
Who needs to be HDS certified?
Any organization hosting or processing personal health data in France on behalf of a healthcare institution must be HDS certified. This includes hospitals, private clinics, health insurers, pharmaceutical companies, and medtech firms. For an IT manager evaluating software for a French hospital, the platform has to hold this certification. If it doesn't, using it isn't just risky—it's illegal. For developers building tools for French healthcare clients, the client will ask for it. If your platform doesn't have it, you're starting over.
What HDS certification actually requires
The requirements to get certified cover physical security of data centers, encryption standards, access controls, audit trails, incident management, and data residency. Personal health data also has to be hosted on infrastructure within the EU, and any access or transfer outside that boundary is subject to strict GDPR and HDS compliance requirements.
The data residency requirement tends to get glossed over. A number of platforms claim EU compliance but rely on third-party cloud infrastructure, which introduces variables in data residency guarantees. When infrastructure is spread across multiple providers, compliance accountability is too.
Why healthcare projects in France kept getting blocked
This has been a recurring problem, particularly for organizations looking to build rather than buy. A healthcare team finds a platform that fits their workflow, the evaluation goes well, and then legal asks for the HDS certificate.
The vendor either doesn't have it or holds it only at the infrastructure level, not the application layer. The project stalls. Sometimes it just gets quietly shelved.
For low-code platforms specifically, this gap was a real obstacle. The tools best suited to letting non-technical teams build their own workflows were largely locked out of the French healthcare market because of it.
Building on an HDS-certified platform
Zoho Creator is now HDS certified, running on EU data centers that are owned, operated, and maintained by Zoho.
For IT decision-makers, that means no multi-vendor compliance chain to account for. The platform is certified and the data stays in the EU. For developers building for French healthcare clients, the compliance question doesn't hold up the build.
What you can build
HDS certification opens up a range of healthcare management applications that were previously off-limits to low-code platforms. Patient intake and registration forms are the most common starting point. So are scheduling and appointment tools for clinics and outpatient facilities.
Clinical workflow apps go further: patient journeys tracked end to end, tasks assigned across care teams, follow-ups managed without separate tooling, and more. Hospitals managing their own regulatory requirements have built audit and compliance tracking on Creator. Health insurers and medtech companies have used it for document and records management.
Getting started
If you're evaluating platforms for a healthcare project in France, the certification question should come before the feature list. Zoho Creator is HDS certified and runs on EU infrastructure Zoho owns and operates. [Book a demo] to see what that looks like in practice.
Compliance beyond HDS
HDS is the certification that governs healthcare data hosting in France specifically, but Creator also meets a broader set of compliance standards relevant to data security and privacy.
This is covered under Zoho's ISO/IEC 27001 certification for information security, ISO/IEC 27701 for privacy management, and ISO/IEC 27017 for cloud security. For healthcare organizations with US operations or global compliance requirements, Creator is also SOC 2 + HIPAA Type 2 certified. And like all Zoho services, it operates in compliance with GDPR.
The full list of Zoho's compliance certifications is available at zoho.com/compliance.
Book a demo to see what that looks like in practice.
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