Privacy policy

MedicSewa is operated from Kathmandu by Phronetic Labs Pvt. Ltd., a company registered in Nepal (company registration no. 318821/80/81, PAN 619763154). We decide how your personal data is used on MedicSewa and are responsible for it. You can reach us at [email protected], on +977 9852836243, or through our contact form.

This policy covers the MedicSewa website, the MedicSewa app for patients, the MedicSewa Go app used by nurses and laboratory technicians, and the services offered through them: online consultations, lab tests with sample collection at home, nursing visits, medicine orders, memberships, and the health records kept in your account. It applies to patients, the family members they manage, and the doctors, nurses and laboratory staff who provide care on MedicSewa.

We collect what is needed to provide care and run the service:

• Account details: your name, phone number, email address, date of birth, gender, address and, if you add one, a photo.
• Family members: the details of people whose care you manage, or who manage yours, and how you are related.
• Health information: the symptoms you describe (typed or spoken), consultation notes, diagnoses, prescriptions, lab orders and results, reports and photos you upload, readings you record such as blood pressure or blood sugar, and medicine reminders.
• Consultation recordings: only if you agree to a consultation being recorded — see section 06.
• Payment information: what you paid, for what, and how, with receipts and refunds. Card and wallet details are entered with our payment partners and are not stored by us.
• Location: the address and map location you give for a home visit or delivery, and the location of nurses and technicians while they are on the way to a visit.
• Messages: messages between you and your doctor in the app, and anything you send us through the contact form or by email.
• Device and technical information: your IP address, device and browser type, app version, notification token, and records of activity on your account kept for security.
• For doctors, nurses and laboratory staff: professional registration numbers, qualifications, identity documents and other documents needed to verify them before they can provide care, and records of the payments we make to them.

• To provide the care you ask for: consultations, tests, home visits and medicine orders.
• To give the doctors, laboratories, nurses and pharmacies looking after you what they need to do so.
• To take payments, issue receipts, apply memberships, promo codes and credit, and process refunds.
• To send reminders and updates about your care by notification, SMS or email, and sign-in codes.
• To verify the doctors, nurses and laboratory staff who provide care.
• To review the quality and safety of care and of the tools in section 05 — for example when a doctor reports a mistake in an AI draft — and put problems right.
• To keep the service secure, prevent fraud and misuse, and fix problems.
• To meet our legal, tax and regulatory obligations.
• To improve MedicSewa, using information in aggregate wherever we can.

Some features use artificial intelligence to help the people looking after you, never to replace them. They are used to:

• ask about your symptoms before a consultation, suggest which doctor to see, tell you to get help at once if something sounds like an emergency, and give your doctor a short summary of your answers;
• turn a recorded consultation into text and draft the notes, for the doctor to check;
• read the results out of a lab report, and explain them in plain language once a doctor has accepted it;
• draft what to do after a consultation, which the doctor checks and edits before it is sent to you;
• summarise your record for your doctor before a consultation;
• point out possible problems with a prescription, for the doctor to review.

A doctor makes every clinical decision and is responsible for it. These tools are provided by Google Cloud under contract, on servers outside Nepal. Google processes the information only to provide the service to us and may not use it to train its own models. The tools do not make decisions about you on their own that have legal or similarly significant effects.

A consultation is recorded only if the patient agrees when asked in the call, and the answer — yes or no — is kept. Declining does not affect the consultation. A recording is part of the clinical record: it is used for clinical documentation and quality of care, is available to the treating doctor and authorised staff, and is kept as long as the medical record it belongs to. A recording is turned into text by the AI tools in section 05, so the doctor can check and finish the notes.

We use your information to provide the services you request, with your consent where the law requires it — including for health information and recordings — to meet our legal obligations, and where we have a legitimate interest, such as keeping the service secure. We handle personal data in line with the laws of Nepal, including the Privacy Act, 2075 (2018).

We do not sell personal information, and we do not use it for advertising. We share it only with:

• Your care team: the doctors you consult, and the laboratory, nurse or pharmacy handling a test, visit or order you booked — each sees what they need for it.
• Family: the person who manages your care on MedicSewa, or the people whose care you manage.
• Payment partners: Khalti and Stripe, to process payments and refunds.
• Service providers: companies that host and store our data, carry video calls, send email, SMS, messages and notifications, provide sign-in with Google or Apple, add cards to your phone's wallet, protect our forms from automated abuse, and provide the AI tools described in section 05. They act on our instructions under contract and may not use your information for their own purposes. A list is available on request.
• Providers you show your health card to: the code on your health card opens your record only for a provider on MedicSewa who is entitled to see it, such as one treating you. Anyone else sees nothing.
• Authorities: regulators, courts or law enforcement, when the law requires it.
• A new owner: if MedicSewa or our business is merged, sold or transferred, your information passes to the new owner, who must protect it as this policy describes. We will tell you before that happens.

Phronetic Labs is based in Nepal, but some of our service providers store or process data in other countries. When data leaves Nepal, we use providers bound by contract to protect it to the standard this policy describes. The AI tools in section 05 run on Google Cloud, outside Nepal.

• Medical records, prescriptions, recordings and invoices are kept for as long as Nepali health and tax law requires, and then deleted or anonymised.
• Messages between you and your care team are kept with your medical records. If you delete a message or conversation, it leaves your view only: the other person keeps their copy, and we keep a record. If someone edits or unsends a message, we keep the original too, even though it no longer shows in the conversation. Our staff look at these records only when needed, such as for a complaint, a safety concern or a legal duty, and looking through our admin tools is logged.
• The location of nurses and technicians on the way to a visit is deleted after 30 days.
• Messages to us are kept as long as needed to answer them and deal with any follow-up.
• Security records are kept for a limited period and then deleted.
• Backups follow the same schedule as the data they contain.

We protect your information with encryption in transit and at rest, access limited to the people who need it, monitoring, and regular review. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach affects you, we will tell you and the authorities as the law requires.

We do not use advertising or analytics cookies. The website and apps store what they need to work on your device — keeping you signed in, your preferences such as language and theme, and your medicine reminders. When you go from our website to an app store, a short-lived note lets the app open on the page you were viewing; it does not identify you and expires within hours.

The apps ask before using any of these, and you can turn them off in your phone's settings:

• Camera and microphone: for video and voice consultations, to photograph a report or symptom, and to speak instead of typing.
• Photos: to choose a picture to share with your doctor or use on your profile, and to save one your doctor sent you.
• Location: to set an address for a home visit or delivery, and for nurses and technicians, to match and guide them to visits.
• Notifications: for reminders, messages and updates about your care.

Turning one off only stops the features that need it.

You may ask us to:

• give you access to, or a copy of, your personal data;
• correct information that is wrong or incomplete;
• delete information we no longer need to keep;
• stop optional messages, and withdraw consent you have given.

You can delete your account in the app, under Settings. Deleting removes the details that identify you — your name, phone number and email — and closes the account. The medical and billing records we are required to keep are retained for the period the law sets, no longer linked to your contact details. To use any other right, write to [email protected]. If you are not satisfied with our answer, you may complain to the relevant authority in Nepal.

Accounts are for adults aged 18 or over. A child, or an adult who needs help with their care, can be added as a family member by the adult who manages their care. That adult books and pays for their care, sees their records, and gives consent on their behalf where the law allows.

An adult who has their own account must accept before anyone can manage their care, and chooses whether updates about their care are shared. When a child is seen by a doctor, we also record who is with them for that consultation — their name, relationship and a way to reach them — and use it for that consultation only.

We update this policy when our services or the law change. We will tell you about significant changes on the website or in the app before they take effect, and the date at the top will always show the latest version.