The best office suite for healthcare 2026

1. Cost structure

Examine the total cost of the software, including licence fees, implementation costs, training costs and any recurring charges.

Establish whether it is a one-off payment or a subscription fee, and how that affects your budget in the long run. Establish what updates cost.

2. Functions

Make sure the office suite offers every required function for your practice, your healthcare organisation or your hospital. But bear in mind as well that most solutions are overloaded with functions, and that often only basic functions such as viewing Word documents are needed. Do you need collaborative functions, where several users can work on one document at the same time? Consider as well providing different solutions to different groups of users.

3. Infrastructure

Establish which infrastructure the office suite runs on. Is it a cloud solution that can be opened in the browser? Or do you prefer locally installed software?

Depending on the solution, further consideration of updates and software distribution matters.

4. Scalability

Check whether the office solution is scalable as your organisation grows. You should make sure your requirements will still be met in future.

Can the licences be extended without trouble? Can that be managed independently, or do you have to contact support every time?

5. Interplay with your primary software

How your office solution works together with your practice or hospital information system can matter, because not every primary system has one built in. Clarify the requirements with your vendor.

6. Interoperability

Interoperability matters for office suites so that documents, spreadsheets and presentations can be opened, edited and exchanged correctly regardless of the vendor. It prevents lock-in effects, makes collaboration between organisations easier and ensures data stays accessible in the long term. Particularly useful here are open, established formats such as ODF (OpenDocument) and PDF/A, along with the widespread DOCX, XLSX and PPTX, which make reliable and durable data exchange possible.

7. Onboarding and support

Is the solution you choose self-explanatory, or is training necessary?

Is it necessary to carry out local installations or to distribute the software? Who performs those installations and configurations? What does that cost?

Examine the software's support options, in terms of response time, hours of availability and cost.

8. Updates, maintenance and outages

Find out about the cost and the schedule of software updates and maintenance services. Are software updates included in the price or do they have to be paid for separately? Are interruptions to operation to be expected during updates?

Ask about outages and how resilient the solution you choose actually is. System outages can restrict your operation considerably and in the worst case can put patients at risk.

9. Data security and compliance

Make sure the software meets the data protection rules and security standards required for health data in your country. Check in particular whether the data is encrypted in transit and at rest, whether it is transmitted securely and where it is stored. Establish as well which data is left behind on the end device and whether “ zero footprint ” is part of the concept.

10. References and ratings

Read ratings from users of the software. Ask for references and speak directly with other users about their experience. Sometimes personal advice is the right route as well.

11. Requirements specific to your country

Consider local software. That way you make sure the statutory requirements and standards applicable in your country are met. In particular, data protection laws are not uniform internationally. The new Swiss Data Protection Act has fortunately been aligned with the European GDPR. Outside the EU, however, the legal position can differ considerably, which makes the corresponding solutions carry significant risk.

12. Long-term cost-benefit analysis

Carry out a cost-benefit analysis to make sure the software supports the profitability of your practice.

If your software supports the efficiency of your practice better than the alternative, then in most cases the additional cost will pay for itself quickly.