Industry: healthcare and care
The healthcare employee app that reaches every shift, without a work email address
tchop is a white-label healthcare employee app: hospitals, care providers and health insurers publish news, shift-relevant notices, documents and a reply channel to staff on their own phone, with no work email account and no company device.
GDPR-compliant · EU hosting available · ISO/IEC 27001, audited by TÜV SÜD
What is a healthcare employee app?
A healthcare employee app is a mobile app published under the employer's own brand, through which hospitals, care providers and health insurers reach nursing and support staff who have no work email address and no company device, with organisational news, shift-relevant notices, documents and a two-way reply channel.
A healthcare employee app runs on a personal phone without a corporate account, so a nurse coming off a late shift reads the hygiene notice on the same device already in a pocket. A healthcare employee app sits beside the clinical systems rather than inside them, and carries none of their content.
Not to be confused with a clinical communication platform. Clinical communication and collaboration systems, the TigerConnect and Vocera category, carry patient data between clinicians. A healthcare employee app carries organisational communication to the workforce. tchop is the second kind and handles no patient data.
Three measured conditions behind the reach problem
Every figure below was read against its primary source, and every source is one click away.
What internal communication in a hospital or a care home actually looks like
The gap is rarely a lack of effort. It follows from where the work happens and which accounts exist.
The notice board reaches the early shift
Information moves through the ward noticeboard, the handover and a private group chat. The night shift finds out last, and the float nurse covering three wards finds out from whoever remembers to mention it.
No work email, no company device
Nursing and support staff usually have neither. The intranet, Outlook and Teams are then channels for administration and management, and a large part of the workforce is structurally out of range.
Private groups nobody governs
Shift swaps and duty information end up in private messenger groups run by whoever set them up. No employer can log, audit or delete that, and it is the weakest point in the data protection picture.
How an employee app works in a hospital or a care provider
Three steps, one publish, no second channel to maintain.
Internal communications publishes once: a roster change, a hygiene notice, an invitation to the staff meeting.
The app delivers it by site, ward, professional group or shift, as a push notification to the personal phone.
Care staff read, confirm and ask back, and reach is reported in aggregate rather than as per-person performance data.
Four jobs a care team needs done every week
A roster change reaches the float nurse
Push notifications are targeted by ward and shift, so a change reaches the people it affects instead of ending on a noticeboard the rest of the team walks past.
Hygiene and safety notices with read confirmation
A notice can be marked as mandatory reading. Staff confirm it in the app and the confirmation appears as an aggregated report, which is what an audit asks for.
Onboarding and knowledge in one place
Documents, checklists and forms stay searchable on a phone, instead of living in an email attachment nobody can find on the third day of a new job.
A reply channel people actually use
Comments, reactions and short polls give the ward a way to answer back, and give internal communications something better than silence to work from.
Data protection, accessibility and co-determination, settled before the call
In healthcare an employee app is judged on its legal frame as much as on its features. These are the four questions procurement asks, with the instrument named in each answer.
Data protection and GDPR
tchop runs GDPR-compliant, with EU hosting available and a data processing agreement as part of the setup. tchop stores no patient data and no content from clinical systems.
That is the honest comparison with the private messenger group carrying shift information today, which cannot be logged, audited or deleted by the employer. Security and data protection at tchop.
Accessibility and the BFSG
Germany's Barrierefreiheitsstärkungsgesetz transposes Directive (EU) 2019/882, and its obligations apply from 28 June 2025. Covered services include electronic commerce. The micro-enterprise exemption in section 3(3) applies to services only, not to products (Bundesfachstelle Barrierefreiheit).
tchop supports easy language and sign language as content formats, screen reader operation and adjustable type size. Conformance is assessed against the actual deployment, not promised in the abstract.
Works council and co-determination
Under section 87(1) no. 6 Betriebsverfassungsgesetz the works council co-determines the introduction and use of technical systems intended to monitor employee behaviour or performance, and German case law reads "intended to" broadly.
tchop reports reach and read rates in aggregate, never as per-person performance data. Use on a personal device is voluntary, and a works agreement template is available. Section 26(4) Bundesdatenschutzgesetz makes a collective agreement a valid basis for processing employee data.
Certification and funding context
tchop is certified to ISO/IEC 27001, audited by TÜV SÜD. German hospitals are digitising inside the funding frame of the Krankenhauszukunftsgesetz, where an employee app is a communication project rather than an infrastructure programme.
Employee app, intranet, clinical system or messenger group?
The comparison that matters is against the channels a ward actually uses today, not against every tool in healthcare IT.
| Requirement | tchop | Intranet, Teams and email | Clinical communication systems | Private messenger groups |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reaches staff with no work email address | Yes, on a personal phone | Only where an account exists | Not their purpose | In practice yes, with no governance |
| Targeting by site, ward, professional group and shift | Yes | Limited | Tied to the clinical process | Informal and unreliable |
| Read confirmation and an audit trail | Yes, as an aggregated report | Depends on the setup | Inside the clinical workflow | No |
| Data processing agreement and deletion concept | Yes, EU hosting available | Depends on the system and the operator | Inside the clinical system | No |
| Accessibility for staff communication | Screen reader, type size, easy language and sign language as content formats | Depends on the system and the editors | Not built for staff communication | No |
| Patient data | No, not built for it | Not its purpose | Yes, this is the category that does it | Not permissible for clinical communication |
| What it takes to launch | A communication project | Usually part of existing infrastructure | Clinically and technically complex | Immediate, and ungoverned from day one |
tchop loses the patient data row, and that is the point of showing it. An employee app that claimed to carry patient data would be the wrong product and the wrong answer to a procurement question.
Who uses tchop in healthcare: AOK
AOK is a statutory health insurer, not a hospital and not a care provider. The published case study records more than 27 million policyholders, roughly 27 percent of the German market, more than 130 years of history and more than 61,000 employees across eleven legally independent regional funds. Four of those funds run on tchop, coordinated with KomPart, the AOK group's partner for internal communications, and each rollout took on average about six months from project start to app launch.
"More than 95% of our employees use our apps everyday with many posting, commenting and actively engaging on the platform."
Linda Mavius, Internal Communications, AOK Plus
For a hospital or a care provider the transferable part is the setting rather than the sector: a large distributed workforce, a regulated environment, strict corporate identity rules and people who are not at a desk. Read the AOK case study.
Where tchop fits in healthcare, and where it does not
A good fit when
- Staff without a work email address have to be reached on their own phone.
- The app should carry your name in the app stores, not a vendor's.
- GDPR, a data processing agreement and EU hosting are procurement criteria.
Not the right tool when
- You need rostering and time recording. That is Papershift, Shiftbase and their category.
- You need clinical documentation or patient data exchange. That is the hospital information system and the clinical communication category.
- You need HR self-service for payslips and leave requests. That is Sage, Hansalog and comparable systems.
Questions healthcare buyers ask
Is there an app for healthcare workers?
There are four different kinds, and each solves a different problem. Clinical systems carry treatment data between clinicians. Rostering apps handle shifts and time recording. Learning apps handle qualification. Employee apps carry organisational communication to staff: news, mandatory notices, documents and a reply channel. tchop is in the last group.
Is a healthcare employee app the same as a healthcare communication platform?
No. The healthcare communication platform category means clinical communication and collaboration: secure messaging about patients between clinicians, in the TigerConnect and Vocera field. A healthcare employee app carries organisational communication to the workforce and handles no patient data. Buying one when the requirement is the other is the most common mismatch in this market.
How much does a healthcare employee app cost?
Pricing has three parts: a one-off setup, a monthly licence and a per-user price. What each part comes to depends on how many employees are in scope, how much configuration the launch needs and which hosting model is chosen. tchop quotes against a specific workforce rather than publishing a list price.
Does an employee app need works council approval in Germany?
The works council should be involved early. Section 87(1) no. 6 of the Betriebsverfassungsgesetz gives it co-determination over technical systems designed to monitor employee behaviour or performance, and German case law reads that broadly. With tchop, reach and read rates are reported in aggregate, use on a personal device is voluntary, and a works agreement template is available.
Does a healthcare employee app have to be accessible?
In Germany the Barrierefreiheitsstärkungsgesetz applies from 28 June 2025, transposing Directive (EU) 2019/882, and covered services include electronic commerce. The micro-enterprise exemption in section 3(3) covers services only, not products. tchop supports easy language and sign language as content formats, screen reader operation and adjustable type size, assessed against the actual deployment.
Does the app reach care staff without a work email address?
Yes, and that is the reason the category exists. tchop runs on a personal phone, with no work email account, no company device and no VPN. A ward roster change, a hygiene notice or an invitation to a staff meeting arrives as a push notification, targeted by site, ward, professional group or shift.
Healthcare and care
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