Hospital Practitioner Contract: Electronic Signature 2026
Electronic signature is revolutionizing the management of hospital practitioner contracts. Discover how to secure, accelerate and dematerialize your HR processes in full compliance.
9 min
Healthcare professionals & institutions
Electronic signature for healthcare professionals
Informed consent, patient record, advance directives, inter-institutional agreements: digitise the sensitive signatures of your institution with a GDPR-compliant platform, compatible with medical confidentiality and integrable with your hospital information system. French hosting, end-to-end encryption, timestamped audit trail.
HDS certification in progress
Certyneo is not yet certified as a Health Data Host (HDS — Hébergeur de Données de Santé). This certification is currently being obtained. For any processing of personal health data within the meaning of Article L. 1111-8 of the French Public Health Code, please verify regulatory compliance with your DPO before deployment.
Learn more about our security roadmap →Healthcare use cases
From informed consent to inter-institutional agreements and advance directives, every signed deed in a healthcare institution can be digitised.
Informed consent
Free, informed and revocable consent from the patient before a medical procedure, surgery, experimental treatment or participation in research (Article L1111-4 of the French Public Health Code). Timestamped signature with full audit trail.
Electronic patient record
Patient validation of information in a medical record, updates to allergies and medical history, consent to sharing with other healthcare professionals. Full traceability of signed versions.
Medical care
Consent to treatment, to a therapeutic protocol, to a coordinated care pathway. Mobile-friendly signature suited to patients on the move or in hospital.
Advance directives
Patient's advance directives regarding end of life (Claeys-Leonetti Act of 2 February 2016). Remote signature with strong identification, retained for ten years, revocable by the patient at any time.
Inter-institutional agreements
Cooperation agreements between healthcare institutions (public-private, Hospital Territorial Groups, care networks), medical services agreements, private practice contracts within an institution.
Supplier and subcontractor contracts
Contracts with lab service providers, medical device suppliers, cleaning subcontractors in sterile environments: the entire administrative back office of a healthcare institution.
Why Certyneo for healthcare
Six concrete guarantees tailored to the requirements of medical confidentiality and the evidentiary level expected in healthcare.
France & EU hosting
Certyneo hosts all data in Germany (IONOS), in infrastructure compliant with ISO 27001 security standards. No transfers outside the EU, no exposure to the Cloud Act.
Enhanced confidentiality
TLS 1.3 in transit, AES-256 at rest, strict data isolation per organisation. The level of protection is compatible with the medical-confidentiality requirements set out in Article R4127-4 of the French Public Health Code.
Advanced signature (AES)
Strong patient identification through email + SMS OTP, unique link with the signed deed, detection of any subsequent modification. An evidentiary level compatible with informed-consent requirements.
Polished patient experience
Journey available in multiple languages, WCAG AA accessible, smartphone-friendly, with no account creation and no app to download. The patient signs in two minutes from their phone, at home or from their hospital room.
Ten-year probative archiving
Duration aligned with medical record retention obligations (20 years for some documents, extended on request). Audit trail embedded in the PDF, exportable at any time for handover to a colleague or a regional conciliation commission.
Documented edge cases
Electronic signatures are not always appropriate: patients in life-threatening emergencies, unconscious patients, minors without a representative. Our documentation addresses these cases explicitly and proposes alternative journeys (third-party-assisted signature, deferral after stabilisation).
SIH, DMP and business software integrations
Certyneo sits upstream of existing healthcare information systems: it collects signatures and the signed document is then routed to your hospital information system, electronic patient record or national DMP through the usual channels.
Generic SIH & DPI
Hospital information systems (DxCare, Cristal-Link, Hopital Manager, Easily, etc.) can trigger the sending of a Certyneo envelope through our REST API or webhooks whenever a document is ready to sign in the patient record.
DMP & Mon Espace Santé
Certyneo does not replace the DMP: it sits upstream to collect patient consent or sign clinical documents. The signed document can then be uploaded into the DMP through your institution's usual tool.
Private practice software
Medical practice software (Doctolib Siilo, Weda, HelloDoc, AxiSanté, etc.): integration through webhooks and Zapier/Make, especially for fee agreements, optical/dental quotes and consent before non-reimbursed procedures.
Specific integration project? Book a call with our team. The Certyneo API is publicly documented at our API documentation.
HDS, GDPR and medical-confidentiality compliance
Health data is among the most sensitive and most tightly regulated in Europe. Certyneo applies the entire applicable framework, transparently — including its current limits.
Health Data Hosting (HDS)
Certyneo is not an HDS-certified host to date. For documents containing personal health data, we recommend that the relevant institutions discuss a dedicated deployment with a partner HDS host — our roadmap includes HDS certification in the second half of the year. For signatures that do not contain health data (inter-institutional agreements, supplier contracts, HR), Certyneo is suitable out of the box.
GDPR & health processing
Article 9 of the GDPR classifies health data as sensitive. Certyneo applies strict minimisation (only the metadata required for signing is stored), systematic encryption, a standard DPA including a preliminary impact assessment, and an up-to-date processing register.
Medical confidentiality — Article R4127-4 CSP
Medical confidentiality applies to every doctor and to everyone who works with them. Certyneo applies strict data isolation per organisation, end-to-end encryption and exhaustive access logging — every technical prerequisite to preserve medical confidentiality during the signing phase.
Informed consent — Article L1111-4 CSP
Consent must be free, informed and revocable. Certyneo's advanced electronic signature guarantees patient identification, precisely timestamps their consent (to start withdrawal or reflection periods) and supports subsequent revocation through a new counter-envelope tracked in the history.
Frequently asked questions from healthcare professionals
Is Certyneo certified for Health Data Hosting (HDS)?
At the time this page was published, Certyneo is not an HDS host. For documents containing personal health data, we recommend that the relevant institutions discuss the most suitable scenario with our team (dedicated deployment through a partner HDS host, or limiting use to documents with no health data). HDS certification is on our public roadmap.
Does electronically signed informed consent carry the same weight as paper consent?
Yes. Article L1111-4 of the French Public Health Code requires free, informed and revocable consent but prescribes no particular form. Article 1367 of the Civil Code recognises electronic signatures as equivalent to handwritten signatures provided they rely on a reliable process — which Certyneo's advanced signature (AES) delivers.
How does Certyneo protect medical confidentiality?
TLS 1.3 in transit, AES-256 at rest, strict data isolation per organisation, no clear-text access by our teams without documented escalation. Certyneo does not store the medical content itself (beyond what is in the PDF): only the metadata required to manage signatures (envelope identifier, emails, timestamps) is kept in the database.
Can advance directives be signed electronically?
Yes. The Claeys-Leonetti Act of 2 February 2016 and Article L1111-11 of the French Public Health Code allow advance directives to be drafted freely, with no required form. An advanced electronic signature timestamped with strong patient identification meets the evidentiary requirements — directives of course remain revocable at any time through a new envelope.
Can we integrate Certyneo with our SIH or DPI?
Yes. Certyneo exposes a documented REST API (see /docs) and real-time webhooks. DxCare, Cristal-Link, Hopital Manager, Easily and other SIH platforms can trigger the sending of envelopes when a patient document is ready to sign. Zapier and Make connectors also cover private practice software.
How do we handle patients without email or smartphone?
Certyneo offers an "in-person signing" mode: the healthcare professional uses their own tablet or workstation to have the patient sign, with identification through an SMS OTP sent to the patient or validation by a trusted third party (carer, caregiver). The audit trail retains the context of the signature.
How long are signed medical documents retained?
Our plans include ten-year probative-value archiving. For medical documents requiring longer retention (20 years for some types of hospital file, 28 years for transfusion records, lifetime for some imaging) extended archiving is available on request. Documents remain downloadable at any time.
What should we do if a patient wants to revoke their consent?
The right to revoke consent is central in healthcare. In practice, you create a new revocation envelope signed by the patient, which is timestamped and linked to the original consent. The case history clearly shows both acts (consent, then revocation), which fully documents the situation in the event of a dispute.
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