Protect Patient Care with Guaranteed Continuity of Your Critical Healthcare Systems
Ensure uninterrupted operation of your clinical, diagnostic, and administrative software with ESCROWSURE’s proven software escrow solutions. Designed to keep healthcare organisations running, even when vendors can’t.
Digital Dependency in South Africa’s Healthcare Sector: Why Continuity Matters
South Africa’s healthcare sector spans public hospitals, private hospital groups, specialist clinics, and diagnostic labs, all reliant on digital infrastructure. Core systems include electronic health records, diagnostic imaging platforms and hospital management software. These technologies are essential to patient care. Software escrow plays a critical role in safeguarding continuity and risk management compliance, ensuring uninterrupted access when vendors fail or systems are compromised.
Risks
Healthcare providers across South Africa face rising operational risks due to increasing reliance on third-party software. Without safeguards in place, disruptions to critical systems can compromise patient safety, breach data regulations, and stall medical services. Below are four high-impact risks that software escrow helps mitigate
Electronic Health Records Outage
A critical EHR outage blocks access to patient histories, prescriptions, and medical history. This delays diagnoses, disrupts patient care, and increases clinical risk in emergencies.
Vendor Insolvency Affecting Radiology Software
When imaging software vendors collapse, hospitals lose access to diagnostic systems and archives. This impacts clinical workflows, delays reporting, and breaches compliance with medical record retention laws.
Loss of Emergency Unit Analytics Software
Failure of analytics platforms used in emergency care impairs triage, resource allocation, and real-time decision-making. This delays critical interventions, increases clinical risk, and compromises patient outcomes in high-pressure scenarios.
Loss of Support for Hospital Payment Systems
Disruption to medical billing or claims processing software halts revenue flow. Hospitals and clinics face cashflow shortfalls, delayed reimbursements, and administrative overload, threatening financial stability and patient service delivery.
How Software Escrow Projects Work
Software escrow ensures healthcare continuity by giving providers access to mission-critical software if a vendor fails.
For example a healthcare provider had its operations crippled when a software vendor they relied on defaulted without warning. The software processed all payments to medical service providers and was vital to their operations as it integrated the ERP system with their medical administration software.
The Supplier refused to hand over a copy of the code and held them hostage because they had no access to their own code. The issue took months to resolve, various attempts failed, eventually a new provider had to be contracted to rewrite the system at the cost of half a million ZAR.
They’ve now secured their new supplier’s code in escrow to prevent the same disruption from happening again.
Common Use Cases
Healthcare organisations use software escrow to protect operations from vendor failure, code inaccessibility, or system downtime.
Secure Custom-Built Systems
Secures source code and documentation for bespoke clinical or administrative systems developed in-house or by contractors
EHR System Protection
Ensures uninterrupted access to patient records during vendor failure or software outage, avoiding delays in diagnosis and treatment.
Emergency Care Readiness
Preserves access to real-time analytics tools used in triage and resource allocation during high-pressure scenarios.
Billing and Insurance Claims Resilience
Protects hospital revenue systems from vendor lockout or failure, keeping reimbursements and financial operations on track.
Benefits
Healthcare relies on uninterrupted access to critical systems. When vendors fail or software becomes inaccessible, the consequences are immediate. Escrow helps providers stay operational, compliant, and focused on patient care.
Reduced Risk of Care Disruption
Escrow ensures access to mission-critical software during vendor failure, preventing downtime in clinical systems and avoiding delays in diagnosis, treatment, and patient handovers.
Compliance Assurance
Supports adherence to regulatory requirements like HIPAA & HITRUST. Escrow ensures system continuity, data access and verifiable business continuity measures.
Enhanced Patient Safety
By keeping clinical platforms online, escrow protects the accuracy and timeliness of medical decisions, especially in emergency or high-risk care environments.
Preserved Operational Efficiency
Prevents administrative bottlenecks in scheduling, billing, and reporting systems, allowing hospitals and clinics to maintain service levels and revenue flow.
Regulations & Compliance
Software escrow supports compliance with POPIA by protecting access to patient data, aligns with HPCSA guidelines on secure clinical systems, and meets Department of Health regulations for digital continuity. It also supports adherence to international standards like HIPAA and HITRUST. By securing source code, escrow ensures system availability, reduces legal risk, and upholds clinical governance in healthcare.
Case Study: Healthcare Provider Locked Out of Critical Software
A major South African healthcare provider experienced a severe operational breakdown when a key software vendor defaulted without warning.
The system, which integrated medical administration with internal operations, became inaccessible. After weeks of pressure, the vendor reluctantly handed over partial source code without technical documentation. The incomplete, unverified code caused further internal disruption, stalling recovery efforts. With no software escrow in place, the provider had no legal right to a verified, usable version of the application. Operations were impacted for over four months, and the organisation ultimately spent more than R500,000 to rebuild the system from scratch using a new vendor.
Clinical workflows, administrative processes, and internal teams were all affected. Today, the provider secures all new vendor agreements through ESCROWSURE. With full verification and code deposit protocols in place, they now have guaranteed access to complete, functional software in any future vendor failure scenario.
Set Up Your Free Consultation
Protect patient care by securing your healthcare software systems with verified escrow. Ensure uninterrupted access, compliance, and operational continuity.
Prevent Vendor Lockout in Clinical Systems
Book a Risk Audit for Your Healthcare IT Stack
See How Escrow Works in Healthcare
Get a Continuity Plan for Your Medical Software
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the agreement customizable? How much customization do you allow?
Yes, absolutely. We believe that each escrow environment is unique and requires a customized approach. ESCROWSURE’s in-house legal counsel will craft a bespoke escrow agreement tailoring the provisions to meet the needs of your specific requirements.
What healthcare software can be protected by escrow?
ESCROWSURE protects EHR systems, lab information management systems (LIMS), diagnostic imaging platforms, hospital management software, billing platforms, and custom-built admin tools.
What triggers the release of escrowed software?
Release conditions include vendor insolvency, failure to maintain services, breach of support agreements, or refusal to provide access. Each trigger is clearly defined in the escrow contract.
Why do we need escrow for SaaS applications?
With SaaS applications, software is not accessed on a server located on the end users premises, but instead, is hosted remotely in the cloud by a hosting services provider usually paid for by the software vendor. This introduces an additional layer of risk as it adds to the supply chain dependencies.
In addition, the data generated by the application is hosted in the cloud too. This means that if the software Vendor were to stop answering the phone, both application and data could be beyond the reach of the end user immediately.
Some end users believe that a migration to a cloud service eliminates the need for an escrow arrangement.
But this is not true.
If anything, the need for escrow is greater for SaaS applications, because of the additional layer of risk which puts both the software and the data at risk if the worst should happen.
How does escrow help us comply with POPIA and HPCSA regulations?
Escrow ensures continuous access to patient data and systems, fulfilling POPIA’s data access requirements and HPCSA’s secure system mandates for clinical governance.
Can ESCROWSURE verify that the source code actually works?
Yes. Our full verification service confirms the code can compile, build, and function independently, including testing the development environment, technical documentation, and operational readiness.