Privacy Policy

Mendly is operated by [OPERATOR FULL LEGAL NAME] — [OPERATOR FULL LEGAL NAME], a New Zealand sole trader trading as Mendly. In this policy “we”, “us” and “Mendly” mean that operator. If the operator later becomes a registered company, this policy will be updated with the company name and registration details.

This policy explains how we handle personal information and health information under the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020, including the information privacy principles, and how we apply the rules in the Health Information Privacy Code 2020 to the health information you record in Mendly.

Mendly is an independent self-management tool. It is not a Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora service, not a government service, not an official patient portal or health record, and it is not a certified or accredited health system.

We only collect what Mendly needs to work. That is:

• Account details — your name, email address, password (stored only as an encrypted hash by our authentication provider), whether you are using Mendly as someone recovering or as a care-team member, and your professional role if you are a clinician.
• Recovery information — what you are recovering from, your recovery start and target dates, and your NHI number if you choose to add it.
• Exercises and movements — the movement plan on your account, sets, reps, holds, notes, and which movements you tick off each day.
• Pain information — pain scores from 0–10, body area, pain type and any notes you write.
• Medication information — medicines on your list, doses, timing, instructions, possible side effects you record, and your daily record of doses taken or skipped.
• Appointments — what the appointment is, when and where it is, who it is with and any notes.
• Contacts you add — doctors, specialists, ACC case managers and support people, including their names and contact details.
• Messages and sharing — messages between you and a care-team member you have approved, your share code, and a record of which care-team members you approved, what you chose to share with them and when.
• Consent and request records — which version of this policy and of the Terms of Use you accepted and when, and any privacy request you make through Mendly.
• Basic technical information — information your device and browser send when you use Mendly (such as IP address, browser type and error logs), used to keep the service running and secure.

Health information is only collected from you, or from a care-team member you have explicitly authorised. We do not buy information about you, and we do not connect Mendly to any national health record.

• To create and secure your account and let you sign in.
• To show you your own recovery plan, pain trend, medication list and appointments, and to save what you record.
• To let you share specific parts of your information with a care-team member you have approved, and to carry messages between you.
• To keep a record of the consent you gave and of any privacy request you make.
• To keep Mendly working, diagnose faults and protect against misuse.
• To contact you about your account or a request you have made.

We do not sell your information. We do not use your health information for advertising or profiling, and we do not use it to train artificial intelligence models.

Mendly stores information in a managed cloud database and authentication service provided by our hosting and platform providers. That database and its authentication service run in Amazon Web Services’ Asia Pacific (Mumbai, India) region, so your information — including health information — is stored outside New Zealand. Where information is held overseas, we rely on providers that are contractually required to protect it to standards comparable to the Privacy Act 2020.

Your NHI number is stored separately from the rest of your record, is readable only by you, and is never included in care team sharing.

Information is encrypted in transit (HTTPS/TLS) and encrypted at rest by our database provider.

• Care-team members you approve. Nothing is shared with a clinician or support person until you approve their request and switch on the specific categories you want them to see. Every category is off until you turn it on. You can change or withdraw this at any time in Account → Privacy & data.
• Our service providers — hosting, database, authentication and email providers that operate Mendly on our behalf, under confidentiality obligations and only for that purpose.
• Where the law requires or allows it — for example a court order, or where disclosure is necessary to prevent or lessen a serious threat to someone's life or health.

The categories a care-team member can be given access to are:

• Exercises and movements — Your movement plan, sets and reps, and which exercises you have ticked off each day.
• Pain scores and notes — Every pain rating you record (0–10), the body area, pain type and any note you add.
• Medications — Your medication list, doses, instructions, recorded side effects and your daily dose log.
• Appointments — Appointment titles, dates, times, locations, who they are with and any notes.
• Contacts and NHI number — Your doctors, specialists, ACC case manager and support people, and your NHI number if you have added it.

• Encrypted connections for everything you send to and from Mendly.
• Database access rules that tie every record to the account it belongs to, so a signed-in user can only reach their own information, plus anything a patient has explicitly shared with them.
• Passwords are never stored in readable form, and weak passwords are rejected.
• Sharing is off by default and requires the patient's approval.
• We keep the number of people with administrative access to the minimum needed to run and support the service.

No online service can promise perfect security. If a privacy breach occurs that is likely to cause serious harm, we will notify affected people and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner as required by the Privacy Act 2020.

We keep your information while your account is active. If you ask us to delete your account, we delete your account and the health information held in it, other than anything we are required to retain by law or need briefly for backup rotation and security logs (removed within [BACKUP RETENTION PERIOD — to be confirmed by the operator]). Consent records may be kept for as long as needed to show what was agreed.

Where health information is held for a health purpose, we take the Health Information Privacy Code retention expectations into account before deleting anything you may later need.

Under the Privacy Act 2020 you have the right to ask for a copy of the personal and health information we hold about you, and to ask us to correct it if it is wrong. In Mendly you can:

• view and edit most of your own details directly in the app;
• download a copy of your data;
• ask for a correction if something cannot be edited;
• turn care-team sharing on or off, or remove a care-team member; and
• request deletion of your account and data.

These options are in Account → Privacy & data once you are signed in. We respond to requests as soon as we can and within 20 working days.

For any privacy question, access or correction request, or complaint, contact [PRIVACY CONTACT NAME] at [PRIVACY CONTACT EMAIL], or write to [POSTAL ADDRESS FOR WRITTEN ENQUIRIES].

If you are not satisfied with our response, you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner: privacy.org.nz, 0800 803 909, or PO Box 10094, Wellington 6143.

If we change this policy we will publish the new version here with a new version number and effective date. Where a change materially affects how we use your health information, we will ask you to accept the new version.