--- title: "Health Data Hosting in France" description: "HDS certification applies to whoever hosts health data for someone else. What that means for a hosted wearable API, and what self-hosting changes." canonical_url: "https://openwearables.io/data-residency/france" --- # Host it where you are already certified. Data residency ยท France In France, hosting health data for someone else requires HDS certification. Open Wearables runs in your own certified environment, so it adds no host to certify. [Get started](https://openwearables.io/docs/quickstart) [Book a demo](https://openwearables.io/book) Why it runs in your cloud ## The layer has to be yours before what you build on it can be. A hosted API keeps the data, and every score computed from it, in a vendor's account. Running the layer yourself keeps it where HIPAA, GDPR and your own policy say it belongs. ### Sovereignty Your regulator, your board or your own policy says health data does not sit in a third party's cloud. ### Residency The data has to stay in a country or region you choose, and you have to prove where it is. ### Control You run the deployment under your own credentials and decide who gets access. What you build on top of Open Wearables is yours. ### Your own reasons No regulator forcing it and no security review coming. You want the data in your own account anyway. ## The short answer. ### Certification follows hosting. HDS applies to whoever hosts health data on behalf of others, from the data centre up to operating the system. ### A hosted platform is a host. If your wearable data sits on a vendor's servers, that vendor hosts it for you and needs certification of its own. ### Self-hosting adds no host. Open Wearables is software running in your certified environment, so the hosting chain stays as it already is. ### No vendor tenant in the path. Self-hosted, the data goes from the provider or the phone straight into your own account, in the region you chose. ### Storage stays in the EEA. Certified hosts now store health data in the EEA. A region you choose in France or elsewhere in the EEA keeps it there. The detail ## Three ways to build it. What each approach adds to a hosting chain that has to be certified. | | Hosted wearable API | Build it in-house | Open Wearables, self-hosted | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | [01] Who hosts the data | The vendor, on its own servers | You, on certified hosting | You, on certified hosting | | [02] Under HDS | The vendor needs its own certification | Your hosting chain, as it is | Your hosting chain, as it is | | [03] The integrations | Written by the vendor | Yours to write and maintain | Already written, MIT licensed | | [04] What it takes | A second certified host to check | Integration work and ongoing maintenance | A deployment in your own account | ## How it works in practice. The hosting question is settled when the deployment is set up, not negotiated afterwards. ### The certified host AWS, Azure and Google Cloud all hold HDS and run French regions, and several French providers hold it too. ### Credentials in your name Provider credentials are issued to you, so the relationship with each wearable provider is yours. ### Moving later Where we set it up, the infrastructure is code in your repository, so a region change is engineering work. ### Inside the EEA Pick a region in the EEA and the deployment, its database and its backups stay there with it. The data path ## Where the data goes, step by step. Every step runs inside your deployment, in the region you chose. Nothing passes through a Momentum tenant on the way. [See the platform](https://openwearables.io/platform) 01 ### Collect Cloud providers connect server to server, and the mobile SDKs read the stores that live on the phone. Every source ends up in the same deployment, in your account. 02 ### Store Everything lands in one schema in your own database, in your French region, with the original payload kept underneath if you switch that on. 03 ### Compute With Pro, health scores from our science team, computed inside your deployment. 04 ### Use Your product reads it over the REST API, reacts to webhooks, or asks questions through the MCP server, all against the same deployment. ## Tell us what you are building We will tell you what it takes to run it on certified French hosting. [Book a call](https://openwearables.io/book) FAQ ## Common questions. ### Are you HDS certified? No. HDS certifies hosts, and Open Wearables is software you run. Self-hosted, the certification in question is your hosting chain's, not ours. ### Do we need HDS ourselves? If you host or operate health data on behalf of healthcare organisations, likely yes, for the activities you perform. Your counsel and your certifier will tell you which. Open Wearables adds none of its own. ### So we do not need a certified wearable vendor? You need certified hosting for the activities in your chain. What you avoid is a wearable vendor hosting the data for you, which would need a certificate of its own. ### Does the data have to stay in France? In the EEA. Since late September 2026, certified hosts store health data inside the EEA, so a French region, or another one in the EEA, meets it. ### Which hosts hold the certification? AWS, Azure and Google Cloud do, and so do several French providers. Your buyer may have a preference, which is worth asking before you choose. ### Does this apply to us if we are not a healthcare provider? It follows the hosting, not the type of company: it covers health data collected in care, prevention or diagnosis and hosted for someone else. Whether that describes you is for your counsel. ### Our customer asks who hosts their patients' data. What do we say? You do, on certified infrastructure you chose. That is usually a shorter answer than naming a wearable vendor and explaining its certification alongside your own. ### Do you give legal advice? No. We tell you what the architecture does. Whether a requirement reaches your product is for your counsel.