Leaving Movari: what happens to your data

Most software companies would rather you did not think about this until you are already committed. I would rather you thought about it now, because the exit terms tell you more about a supplier than the feature list does.

You are the data controller for your patients' records. You carry a retention duty of at least eight years after last treatment, longer for children. That duty does not transfer to us and it does not end when your subscription does. So the question of what you can take with you is not a nice-to-have: it is the thing that determines whether you can meet a legal obligation.

You can export everything, at any time, without asking

There is a button. It is in Settings under Data & Account, it works on any day of your subscription, and you do not need to notify us or request anything.

You get a zip containing:

• A record.md file per patient, the full clinical record in markdown: patient details, every clinical note with its amendment history, outcome measures, exercise plans, adherence, and appointment history.
• A documents/ folder per patient, every file you ever uploaded, byte for byte as you uploaded it.

You can also export a single patient, from that patient's record, which is what you would use to answer a Subject Access Request.

Why markdown and not PDF

Markdown is plain text with light formatting. You can open it in any text editor for the next thirty years without needing a specific piece of software, and a future system can parse it to import your history.

A PDF looks tidier and is worse at both jobs: it is harder to migrate out of, and it needs a renderer we would have to keep maintaining. The UK GDPR asks for a "commonly used and machine-readable format", and markdown satisfies that better than a document designed for printing.

One honest correction while we are here: our current Terms of Service describe the export as a PDF. That is wrong (it is a leftover from an earlier plan), and the product is right. We have logged it to fix at the next legal review rather than quietly changing the product to match a sentence.

What the export does not include

This matters and I would rather you knew now:

• The audit log
• Invoices and the billing ledger
• Call recordings and voicemail transcripts
• Patient message threads from WhatsApp, Instagram or Messenger
• Intake form submissions, session types, availability rules, referral contacts and automation settings

Everything in that list is deleted when your account is purged. So if you need any of it (most likely invoices for your accountant, or a message thread you consider clinically relevant), deal with it before you close. Message content you have already saved into a clinical note is in the export, because at that point it is part of the note.

The export covers the clinical record, which is the part with the legal retention duty attached. It is not a complete disk image of your account, and I would rather say that plainly than let you discover it afterwards.

What happens when you close

Immediately. Your patients and their exercise plans are archived. This means the magic links your patients use to see their programmes stop working straight away, not in 30 days. If you are moving to another system, tell your patients before you close rather than after.

For 30 days. Nothing is deleted. Your account sits in a holding period. Every time you log in you land on a page showing the deletion date, with three options: re-open the account, download a fresh export, or sign out. Re-opening restores everything exactly as it was, including un-archiving the specific patients and plans that closure archived, while leaving alone anything you had archived yourself.

If your subscription lapsed rather than you choosing to close, re-opening asks you to re-subscribe first. Same restore, one extra step.

At 30 days. Everything goes. Database records, uploaded files, call recordings, the lot, followed by the account itself. This is irreversible and there is no backup we can restore you from afterwards. That is the point of a deletion promise.

Two things I am not going to dress up

There is no human hand-holding on the way out. Migration into Movari is done by a person. Migration out is a button. If you want your data reshaped to fit a specific competitor's import format, that is not something we currently do, and I am not going to imply otherwise.

We do not currently email you during the closing period. No confirmation when you close, no reminder as the deletion date approaches, no notice when it happens. The date is shown on the page you land on every time you log in, but if you close your account and never log in again, nothing chases you. I think that is wrong, it is logged as a defect, and it will be fixed, but it is the behaviour today and you should plan around it. Download your export at the point you close, not at day 29.

Why tell you all this

Partly because you would find out anyway, and finding out late is worse.

Mostly because the lock-in question is the correct question to ask a small supplier, and the answer should be checkable rather than reassuring. Everything above is either something you can test yourself in a free trial (go and click the export button, see what comes out) or something written into our Terms of Service.

A supplier who is comfortable telling you exactly how to leave is a supplier who intends to keep you for reasons other than difficulty.