Privacy policy

doctor.ing is a virtual medical clinic in British Columbia. We are responsible for the personal information we collect about you under BC's Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA) and, as a medical clinic, under the standards of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of BC. This policy explains what we collect, why, who sees it, where it is kept, and your rights.

What we collect

• Identity and contact: your name, date of birth, sex at birth, Personal Health Number (PHN), phone, email, address and preferred pharmacy.
• Health information you give us: your answers in the pre-visit questionnaire, symptoms, history, medications, allergies, photos or documents you upload, and messages you send us.
• Health information created during your care: the physician's notes, prescriptions, requisitions, referrals and follow-up plans.
• Health information we receive about you: lab results, imaging reports, specialist letters and hospital records sent to the clinic, usually by fax.
• Billing information: the fee and diagnostic codes for each visit, submitted to the Medical Services Plan (MSP).
• Technical information: sign-in events, the pages you use in the app, and a record of who in the clinic viewed your chart.

We do not collect your Social Insurance Number, credit card or biometrics, and we do not record video or phone visits.

Why we collect it

• To provide your care: assess your concern, book a visit, prescribe, order tests, refer and follow up.
• To communicate with you: sign-in codes, visit times, and alerts that a new message is waiting. Emails and texts never contain your health information; they tell you to sign in to read it.
• To bill MSP for insured visits.
• To keep the medical record the law requires, and to let you see who accessed it.
• To keep the service safe and secure.

The assistant

Before your visit, a software assistant asks you questions and prepares a summary for the physician. It also helps the clinic file documents and highlight abnormal results. The assistant does not diagnose, prescribe or decide anything about your care. A licensed physician reviews everything it prepares. The assistant runs in Canada on infrastructure controlled by the clinic, and the questions and answers it processes are not used to train it. A separate safety check, which is not the assistant, looks for emergency symptoms and will tell you to call 911 if it finds any.

Where your information is stored

Your record, documents and the assistant's processing are stored in Canada (Amazon Web Services, Montréal, with backups in Calgary). Video visits run on the clinic's own server in Montréal and are not recorded. The only information that leaves Canada is the address of the email we send you, through Amazon's email service in the United States; those emails contain no health information.

Who can see your information

• The physicians treating you and, for scheduling, faxing and billing tasks, the clinic's administrative staff. Access is limited by role, and every time someone opens your chart it is logged. You can see that log on request.
• People and organizations involved in your care, when needed: your pharmacy, laboratories and imaging departments, specialists, and MSP.
• Service providers that run our systems under contract. They may only use your information to provide their service to us.
• Anyone else only with your consent or where the law requires it.

We do not sell your information or use it for advertising.

Consent

By creating an account you consent to receiving care virtually and to the assistant collecting your history. You may withdraw consent at any time by messaging the clinic or contacting the privacy officer. If you withdraw consent to virtual care we can no longer provide visits, and we will help you find in-person care. Withdrawing consent does not delete your medical record, which the College requires us to keep.

How long we keep it

Medical records are kept for at least 16 years from your last visit, or from when you turn 19, whichever is later. Sign-in codes are kept for 10 minutes and sessions for up to 30 days. Technical logs are kept for 90 days.

Your rights

• Access: see your record in the app, download a copy from your profile, and ask for anything not shown. We answer formal requests within 30 business days.
• Correction: tell us if something is wrong. We correct factual errors; clinical opinions are not rewritten, but your request is noted on the record.
• Complaints: contact our privacy officer first. You may also contact the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia at oipc.bc.ca, 250-387-5629 or toll-free 1-800-663-7867.

Security

We use encryption in transit and at rest, extra encryption on your PHN, multi-factor sign-in for staff, private networks and continuous logging. If a breach affects you we will tell you what happened and what we are doing about it.

Contact

Privacy officer: [name, title] · [email] · [phone] · doctor.ing, [mailing address]

See also our terms of service and accessibility statement.